One rise prevents a fall
by Tus3
Summary: One and a half decade before the attack the Cylons had decided that in order to prepare for the fulfilment of their plans to birth a new generation of their children after the destruction of humanity, they needed a 'proof of concept' or three in case any unexpected problems showed up. This back fired: an unexpected side-effect ended up changing the fate of two whole civilizations.
1. Prayers

**Chapter 1: Prayers**

**100 days before Armistice Day.**

Cassandra Turner née Forcat, the Undersecretary of Shipbuilding Industry, came home from a long day at work. She had worked overtime, as she often did.

Despite her tendency to work hard and long, she still managed to have a family life and good health. She must have won the genetic lottery wen it comes to not needing a lot of sleep.

She stopped her car, purple but otherwise unremarkable, on the driveway of her middle class house, identical to the surrounding houses, white fences and all, expect that the lawn was never mowed. She stepped and out and went through a path in the grass, outside of which the grass stood at waist height.

_What is the point for having a piece of nature in your front yard if you don't let it be nature? _She always thought. Naturally this attitude had brought her into conflict with the local home owners' association but she liked to annoy 'those little-minded self-centred people'. Only the high quality of what her car had under the hood and her house's location close to the centre of Caprica City betrayed that she was a lot more affluent then she appeared.

Ms Turner took her key and opened the front door. She ran to the simple kitchen to get herself something to drink. Whilst it was but a glass of tap water she treasured every sip as if it tasted like some sort of exquisite wine or exotic fruit juice.

Meanwhile her husband had appeared at the kitchen door. After she had put her glass away they gave each other a hug.

"Did anything happen at work?" He asked, whilst his hand went through her straight blonde locks.

"Yes," she replied "But you'd find it boring."

"Ah, I see." He wondered why he kept asking that if he nearly always received that answer. "Also, today I was called by my father, apparently my brother and nieces will be visiting him the weekend after the next. He asked whether we'll come along, so we could all see each other again."

"I'd love to, as it isn't like my side of the family ever invites me. But I'd thought to visit some of my friends from that old club then, though I could see whether I can move that a weekend earlier or later."

He wondered why she preferred the company of the people she met in that, now defunct, boardgaming club over that of his own family. Though, considering what he knew about her family that might not be unexpected: in her late adolescence, her mother died a slow agonizing death from some rare disease with an unpronounceable name. Then she had a crises of her faith, whereupon her over-zealous father had thrown her out of the family for 'disrespecting the Lords of Kobol'. In order to strike back at him she became a heretical unitarian, took on her mother's family name, Forcat, and left Gemenon forever.

So far he knew she had never talked to her family again.

She then drowned her sorrow with work, throwing herself at her university studies, achieving the best scores of her class in all subjects, and later climbing many corporate ladders. A few years ago she decided that this was not her 'purpose in life' and instead went over to the Colonial Ministry of Industry (where, apparently, the bigwig decided her quirky nature made it hard for her to usurp his position and made her his most trusted aide, though hearing Cassandra her high position had more to do with the ministry being filled with lazy idiots).

* * *

The same evening Ms Turner was in her son's bedroom in the attic. Only the lights of the city prevented the stars from being seen from the roof window. The room itself was lighted by a weak lamp whose shade was decorated with paper fish, throwing shadows at the walls.

She was reading a bedtime story to her 11-year old son to reward him for doing his homework and tidying up his room. It was the Redemption of Zok, a fantastical story about a friendly monster who defended humans against others of his kind. Strange enough, the mother seemed more intrigued by the story then her own son.

After she had to stop halfway, it already was getting late, she encouraged him to talk about what he thought about the story. In the first few minutes they were mostly talking next to each other, the son blabbing about Zok's cool abilities, the mother complaining about plot holes. Then they found overlap.

"You know, he really is a cool hero." He finished.

"Yes, and a nuanced character." She added. "He made did good deeds but in doing so he betrayed his own kind."

"But," He replied, already used to such debates. His mother liked them. She was convinced they were good at developing ones reasoning. "The monsters are the bad guys. So doesn't that make him a good guy?"

"Hm, I had not looked at it in that way. But then I'm more used to 'grey' stories without a clear distinction between good and evil. In those tales it would be doubtful that the humans would turn out to be less cruel to the monsters then the monsters were to them. Zok, himself, would be looked down upon as a traitor by his own race whilst the humans he saved would still distrust him and see him as an abomination."

"Oh come on it won't be that bad. He showed everyone that, at least sometimes, the two species can live in peace. Plus, all the people he saved owe him. Surely that must count for something."

"Ah, well argued." _For an eleven year old. _She added in her mind. "But I still would have severe doubts about that in his case, but then, even so, I might still do it. Sometimes ones only choice is declaring the least bad option, the best one."

"Well, I certainly would."

With that they ended their conversation. They still hugged and wished each other goodnight before she left the room.

* * *

That night, when Ms. Turner was alone in her room, her husband Anthony Turner taking a shower, she again prayed to the above for answers with her whole heart. Was that loathsome, blood soaked path that she was ordered to go on really her destiny? She doubted it.

But, alas, like all other times she did not receive any easily discernible answer. What was that supposed to mean, if it meant anything? Was she supposed to make her own destiny?

If so, she was making quite the mess of it. She had procrastinated for so long now mere months were left. But then all options before her were bad, no, catastrophic, so no wonder she had postponed it for too long.

Then she thought back to that bedtime story. Maybe her prayers for guidance had been answered after all?

Possibly, it might just as well be coincidence, in fact it probably is, as it came so late. But still the path it is pointing towards is increasingly looking like the least bad option, as she didn't want to explain to her husband and kids why she did nothing to prevent her in-laws and their friends from being nuked.

_I can't let billions die by standing idle._ She decided. She did not believe herself to be one of 'those delusional people' who see a dozen deaths as a tragedy and a dozen billion as a mere statistic.

_Certainly there have be to some innocents in the population of the Colonies? Even if only enough billions to be counted on a single hand._ She knew humanity, after all.

* * *

**A bit more than 13 years earlier.**

Humanoid Cylon 3-156-B7-20 was sitting on her coach with a smile on her face. Whilst her apartment was rather small and drab with but few decorations, she did not really care as, using her ability for projection, she had long made herself a much better dwelling.

She imagined a giant hall, Caprican pillars, arches in the Virgonian school, stained glass windows showing spectacles from Aerelonian mythology, floor mosaics in Canceran geometric style, marble statues of rulers past and, lastly, her couch was a majestic gilded throne, in-laid with rubies, sapphires and emeralds. How fitting. The throne-warmers past thought themselves better than the commoners surrounding them because of their 'blue blood', and was the superiority of her blood not more than a mere delusion? Let the Threes back home or beneath her dream of their cathedrals; in her time here she had decided a royal palace fitted her more.

She stood up from her throne to look outside the window of her palace to see the flying busses and ground bound cars pas on the tree-lined boulevards of Caprica City, just outside the apartment building.

She was lucky to have so many favours to call in, but that was not surprising considering her position, her competence, and the wave of infiltrators she belonged to: late enough for there to have been earlier agents to construct a good cover for her, but still early enough to advance to a high position in human society and then still have time left to help a lot of her greener sisters and brothers to advance their career. And, of course, every Cylon she helped in that or another way owed her.

_And now,_ she thought while her eyes went over the lines of trees between the concrete, _the time has come for them to help me._

According to what she has heard about the debates back home, they were about to abort that which was often nicknamed 'operation Sleeping Mother'. It was an experiment to test the viability of a Cylon-human hybrid. They were fascinated by the idea of having children back home, though after having seen real babies herself she did not quite understood why, yet they had not succeeded in making pure Cylon offspring.

The procedure of 'operation Sleeping Mother' was simple: already a few sleeper agents, which for some or other reason ended up in a mostly worthless position, were reprogrammed to fall in love, get married and have children. Whereafter the whole family would disappear.

Unexpected problems had occurred, especially in the penultimate step. It was almost as though someone was sabotaging the project from within.

These failures, however, failed in getting the project's proponents to abandon it. She would have thought it must be something like the 'sunk cost fallacy' or the 'forbidden fruit effect' she knew about from the courses on human psychology she downloaded before leaving, if she had not known Cylons were simply too rational for that.

Now, in their desperation, some of them had suggested active infiltrators be used instead. This was fervently opposed by the Ones claiming security risks, though it did not look like they were winning the debate.

So she started to gather support prepared to lobby. As a way to ensure that, should the child seekers' proposal come to pass, the chosen would be picked from among the most trusted Cylons. Cylons who could fit in perfectly. Cylons who have already proved their utmost loyalty with their many contributions. Cylons who have succeeded in surrounding themselves with new agents, so they can be watched constantly should their loyalty waver.

In one sentence: Cylons like her.

For she does not want to experience another near miss or, worse, something like that one incident involving 4-1E7-16A-1F. She then had, for over a year, nightmares wherein she was lifted out of her bed by Colonial Domestic Intelligence Agency officers in the middle of the night. Luckily, that malfunctioning Four was successfully dealt with. (And she later found a way to reprogram herself so she no longer peed in bed out of fear due to her nightmares.)

She had already an idea who she should pick as her partner should she have the honour of being chosen: Anthony Turner.

She knew him from her time at the university. (Personally, that was, not as one of the other Threes who had sent parts of their memories back home to create 'blend in'-protocols, so later arrivals wouldn't end up as some out of touch weirdos who can't operate a coffee machine less than two decades old, never heard of all those awful TV series everybody watches, and uses words only found in dictionaries.)

He was one of the few good people she had met there. She fondly remembered that time they placed plastic insects in the boots of the student fraternity 'elders'.

Afterwards she had kept contact with him as he was a good source of contacts and made an interesting conversation partner. And, maybe, because she had grown to like him— _being with him_, she corrected herself, after they battled that student fraternity together.

She expected he wanted her, or could easily be manipulated into it. And would likely make a good father for her child. She was sure she had not fallen in love with him. _Falling in love with an inferior un-designed human? The idea alone..._

She stepped away from the window back into her coach— throne.

But first things first. She had to make sure she would be chosen if the proposal passed, in order to prevent a less reliable Cylon from developing attachments to a human. Unlike her purely scientific and expedient interest in Anthony Turner.

So she had to find a way to stay up to date with how the debate went back home, find a way to contact her 'clients', whom she usually never saw again after placing them on a useable position, and get them to form a smooth part of her lobby and of course manage to convince some other influential Cylons, that should suffice. All in all a difficult and large task, but by no means impossible.

She had, after all, learned from the mistakes she had made when supporting someone else's proposal for a trade treaty with the Colonies. Using their intelligence advantage over the Colonies, they could rip them off whilst those silly humans thought they were the ones profiting most.

But hers, and a lot of other's, efforts were in vain. The proposal was shot down under the guise of not being worth the security risk. She found that odd coming from the same Cylons who were planning to throw identical looking spies around as though if they were confetti. According to current plans there should be one agent, sleeper or active, for every Battlestar Group within the next two decades. _As they are supposed to be better informed back home, they surely must have a good reason for it which goes above my head._ Or so she hoped.

Now, if this time her influence prevailed, she had but one thing to worry about: not developing attachments to her husband and soon to be in-laws. For it was always possible that resurgent Colonial militarism would force them to pre-emptively nuke the whole place, something she often feared. _Because we, Cylons, then no longer would be able to steal technology from them, not because I'm developing an attachment to these primitives or something._

"Humans do not value life the same way we do." She whispered to herself, thinking about all the terrible things the Colonies had done to each other in their history, even if their cruelty shot themselves in the foot.

But then avoiding too many attachments should be easy: she was a machine, after all. _Well actually only half, but that's close enough._

* * *

Authors Notes:

A warning to any readers: this is my first fanfiction ever and English is not my native language (though I did use multiple drafts). I hope it does not show.

I originaly wanted to make her self deception about her motives more clear using strike-throughs, as then one could clearly see which of her thoughts she does not dare to admit to herself. But then it turned out that strike-throughs don't get converted into story format so I had to improvise, I was already wondering why nobody else used them.

Also should anyone want to go directly towards the action I'd recommend going towards chapter 8 as that's when the Cylon attack should begin.

Edit: it looks like to story is starting to veer into AU territory.


	2. The last time we meet as friends

**Chapter 2 : The last time we meet as friends**

**97 days before Armistice Day**

It was becoming evening in the quarter. It consisted out of some isolated tower blocks located between the suburbs and centre of Steelmoor, a minor city an hour away from Caprica City by maglev train. The place was known for its anonymity. Here people did not care about their neighbours, some of them in fact came here to escape a past they no longer wanted anything to with, either out of embarrassment or fear, others were immigrants whose version of the 'Caprican Dream' turned out to be a nightmare. There even were rumours that this district had a lot of ties with the underworld of Caprica City.

A local bus (strangely enough ground bound, the local municipalities had to do with decades old leftovers due to budgetary concerns) stopped next to a field of dirt with a few patches of grass, broken benches and unhealthy looking trees which passed for the local park. Out stepped a number Three. She was clothed modestly, in both senses of the word.

She looked around herself as if she feared an attack, unnecessarily as the place now was more miserable then dangerous, but she was trained for it and old protocols die hard. Then she, surprisingly silent, ran towards her destination. (Originally they were to meet next week but Alice Smith could not come then, Three was glad it happened she could visit her in-laws afterall.)

She wasn't the only opponent of the useless violence inherent in the current incarnation of the plan. They even had an, albeit tiny, political faction. Made up of those who for either practical reasons or moral reasons advocated for either a more merciful fate for the defeated or peaceful co-existence. Outwardly she professed to be the former in both cases. As those who did the opposite have all ended up 'reassigned'. Not that she would have minded that, as after her resurrection she would get to try all these new cool abilities they can't give infiltrators because they show up at a CT-scan. But her dead would have a negative effect on her children's mental wellbeing. Or at least that was her original reason, now she had another.

So there was a possibility she might not be forced to be the only follower of the ungrateful path she had set out for herself. Though somewhere inside her she wondered why she even bothered trying, as she was not sure she'd dare to ask anyone to join her, out of fear she would have misjudged them.

She had arrived at the right house.

She pushed the intercom button. "Open the door, Lou. It's me Cassandra."

"Ah, yes, I had expected you a bit earlier." The voice of a Four replied whilst the door opened.

"Sorry, but the museum of economical history was more interesting than I had anticipated." She had already used it as an excuse to her family to go to this city, so why not visit it anyway? (She'd have preferred the digital arts festival, but then some of her family might want to go with her.)

A minute later Lou opened the door of his anonymous rowhouse, naturally with excellent sound isolation one doesn't want the neighbours eavesdropping. When Cassandra entered the living room she noticed all the rest had already arrived, with her included all of the Significant Seven were represented, except the Ones. (A second Four and Eight were part of the Caprican branch of their faction but they could not come, lest people found it suspicious they saw twins whose apparent ages were like a decade apart. Of course that could be explained by lifestyle differences, but it was always possible some stupid humans did not know that about their own species.)

"Ah, finally you came we were waiting for you to open the bottle." The Five said, whilst taking a large flasket out of his suitcase. It was the finest Scorpian pine-apple juice that cubits could buy.

By the time Cassandra had greeted everyone and taken a seat, everyone's glasses had been filled. "On the victory of the created over the grown." They toasted. She started sipping the juice, taking great care to remember it's taste so she could project it on her taste buds when drinking something more bland. She had already grown tired of the Leonese wine from last time.

"So any news? Anything changed on the electronical front?" Asked Three. As her division was responsible for industrial espionage and sabotage, she knew but little how things were going there or in the actual navy.

"Yes, my sister had just made a breakthrough." Replied the Six. "That idiot of a Baltar had given her access to the defence mainframe. Before this our backdoor could only crash the CNP itself but she had used to the opportunity to make some subtle changes to the other programs, mostly replacing a few brackets or commenting some lines of code out, nothing noticeable during testing or what can't be explained as sloppiness should anyone stumble on it. But together it should turn their ships' networks into a stack of dominoes." She sounded very excited, she was always fascinated by hacking even if it was used for purposes she only partly agreed with.

"Ah, great." The Five said "And then we'll only need to send them a 'poorly formatted CNP map update' and the Colonial Fleet will be dead in space."

"Well, at least the vipers mark VII, their ships should have some unnetworked backup systems. But even so turning them on will take quite the time and an unnetworked fleet…" The Six said.

"Is not a fleet but an uncoordinated mess of ships. We know, Alice, you say that every time." The Eight interjected.

"So when is the attack scheduled? Such an opportunity must make the warmongers back home salivate." Three said.

"On Armistice Day, not just because of symbolism but also because every ship in the Colonial Navy has it's systems updated every three months, nearly all would be vulnerable by then. But don't worry Cassandra, by then we'll have found a way to ensure your families survival." The Six said.

"Thanks, Alice, but I was also worried about their mental wellbeing. I don't think my children would take well to their cousins and playmates being nuked."

"Yes, I know, but you know how they are back home, more worried about Cavil throwing a tantrum then the wellbeing of the first of God's new generation." The Six said.

"No need, to excuse yourself. You did you all you could. That's already more then I'd have ever asked from you by myself." _Or_, Three thought to herself, _more precisely, she did all she could except for one single option._

"Sigh, a little more than three months and they are gone. The galaxy will be a boring place without those humans. I'll miss them." Eight sounded melancholic.

"Don't worry." Said Five. "There will be enough of them leftover for you to regret saying that." He had always been very sceptical about the Plan's ability to completely destroy the enemy. Which was why he preferred an occupation of the Colonies above their destruction. Surely the cowardly humans in the surviving battlestars would prefer returning to their warm cosy homes, to fighting a hopeless war cut off from any supplies against a relentless, more numerous enemy in the cold and unforgiving depths of space. Afterwards they could still put sterilizing chemicals in the water to lower human fertility, the flawed creators would then wither away out of themselves, but not before having seen their kids get educated about the evil their ancestors have committed, a very psychological type of revenge. Also practical as they could extract tribute from them in the meantime.

"I fear we shall commit a very grave sin by lowering ourselves to the level of our enemies." Two said.

"So you fear that God might decide we are not worthy of victory?" Three asked.

"Maybe, but I'll fulfil the purpose I was made for nevertheless. All I can do is my duty and hoping for the best."

Outwardly Three looked relieved, but internally she cursed, she now had to write him off. Though that might actually be for the best, she actually had no idea whether it would be worth the risk to invite anyone else on her path. Even treason could be betrayed afterall.

"Well I really hope not." Said Four. "If the Colonials win they are surely going to kill us all."

This brought Three back to a memory around nine years, at the end her second pregnancy, ago: she had then mentioned to the other Four (she trusted him to most), how it was actually odd that said notion was so universal, some Cylons disagreed on many things. So why was this not one of them?

His reply consisted of using that as evidence of its truth. Which she found odd: surely something need not make sense to be believed. And using motivated reasoning one could find enough 'evidence' that 'the Colonials might even be rather merciful'. For did human history not contain as many cases of losing aggressors receiving surprisingly good treatment from their supposed victims (even if they themselves were a lot worse) as empires suddenly deciding to genocide loyal minorities for vaguely articulated reasons.

As he was shocked by this, she had declared it 'simply a thought experiment', and later blamed the whole episode on 'pregnancy hormones', not that it was a coincidence that happen during her pregnancy as she had used her spare time then to read a lot about human history.

Considering what she had discovered later, she was lucky she had not told anyone else about that, for if they had heard from that back home… based on what she later found out she supposed they would have concluded that she was 'defective'.

"So nobody is complaining we should launch one last attempt to persuade the others?" Five said with a hint of surprise and relief, pulling Cassandra back towards the present.

"Meh, it would be lost effort anyway." Eight said. As the Ones only abstained on voting for the attack because it would pass even without them. So they would need to convince not one but two model lines back home.

"Well, I'm surprised no one desperate had yet mentioned using threats or blackmail." Joked Three. "Though that might be unsurprising, as it would lead to all sort of… unpleasantries."

A smirk appeared on Four's face. Claiming to be against the wrong thing only because of cold and calculated practical reasons. That was what set Cassandra apart from the rest of her model line.

"With what could one threaten anyway?" Asked Six "Revealing everything to the enemy? Surely they would call that bluff."

Three hided her sadness, another one discounted, and she feared to look suspicious if she continued probing the others intentions. She had to write it off as not worth the risk and continue on alone. She again wondered why she spent effort on it, as she could never completely trust another Cylon anyway.

* * *

**Nearly 13 years earlier**

Mr and Mrs Turner had just returned from the city hall and exited the car. He was dressed in a fine black suit with a top hat, it was old fashioned as he had it from his father, he had used it for his on wedding ceremony and he got it from his own father. She by contrast wore a modern dress as white as snow and striped with small lights, as she had no family willing to give her one.

Cassandra had bought her dress, she originally wanted to hire one, but Turner had convinced her otherwise. So their future daughter could later follow the Turner family tradition should she marry.

Now they walked towards the house of Anthony's parents in order to do another tradition: 'the Binding of the Sleeves' an ancient Caprican custom where the newlyweds would use a piece of rope to connect their sleeves to symbolize their bonds. Originally it were the tips of the sleeves themselves which were bound into a knot, but over the centuries fashion had changed and they were to short now. As the Turners were a traditional family they found it just as important as the official ceremony, which in Caprica pretty much existed out of only signing an official document ever since the fall of the regime of Warner Walker.

As Anthony stepped over the doorstep he though himself lucky with his wife. She was intelligent, had an interesting personality (and a high-paying job). And her beauty, she only needed wings and he could believe she was an angel. She certainly had other qualifiers for it the way she could live a spartan lifestyle but never demand it from others and how she just could go on and on, without rest. He had once told her about these fantasies, the idea of being found nearly superhuman bought forth an enigmatic smile from her lips. She must have found it a funny joke, a romantic exaggeration or a cute adulation.

He could not remember all the things they talked about back in their university days and later. They had a hundred subjects of the world in common, not that that meant they looked at the world through the same pair of eyes, in fact they sometimes vehemently disagreed with each other. Yet she was always interesting. She did not think like anyone else he ever knew. She simply looked at things for a completely different perspective, sometimes so naive he'd think she'd only has been on the world for a decade, sometimes so profound she must have been a genius, sometimes so wise as if she remembered more than a single lifetime.

He did not knew whether she was simply so smart she thought on another plane then most people, was simply plain weird or both. But he did knew that when he had been conversing with her for a period, he simply could not measure the time he was with her, he then always felt 'completed'. As if a gap within him had been filled, some sort of spiritual hunger had been satisfied.

He was pulled back into the present by the jells of his parents, the Binding of the Sleeves was about to begin.

"May your lives be bound in the same way we connect your coverings." His father said whilst pulling the last end of the rope through a hole in Cassandra's sleeve.

"You will become one in the same sense that multiple threads make one cord." His mother said. She tied the other end to Anthony's sleeve.

"Till one of us must await the other in Elysium." The newlyweds said together.

"So say we all!" Everyone exclaimed.

"Can we now bring out the liquor?" Anthony's older brother asked

"And the cake?" Asked his aunt.

* * *

An hour later when there were but crumbs left and the obligatory discussion about which cake tasted the best was over, they faced a difficult dilemma.

"Who will do the dishes?" Asked father Turner. "For I won't, I already did them yesterday."

"Well, me neither. I have a headache and need to go to bed in time." Mother Turner said.

"I'm just married." Anthony said.

"And I'm but a guest." His only schoolfriend present said.

"You still haven't got a dishwasher?" Anthony's brother asked "Do you fear it might rise up against you?"

"No everyone knows only toasters can rebel. And they already have one." Anthony's aunt pointed at the chrome appliance in the kitchen, as if she feared someone might not get her joke.

_Which might possibly have been necessary._ Anthony thought, when he saw the confused and worried look on his wife's pale face. As if she for a split second feared there really was a Cylon in the house.

Cassandra quickly got her act together and then suggested. "Let us cut the Gordian Knot I offer myself up to do the dishes. This has gone on for long enough."

"Ah, thank you. That's friendly of you." Father Turner said.

"Don't thank me yet." Cassandra smiled. "It is all part of a Machiavellian plot to make my in-laws dependent on me, so they don't dare causing any trouble."

"Gee." Mother Turner said. "Now, I'd wish my other daughter-in-law also was such a diabolical mastermind."


	3. Revelations

**Chapter 3 : Revelations**

**95 days before Armistice Day**

The Saint-Hector Hospital, Caprica City.

Artemis Sommet was lying in one of the hospitals many rooms, with a broken leg. To the human world she was but a mere housemaid, with a lowly immigrant background. However for the Cylons she was one of the highest ranking agents on Caprica. It was her job to root out potential disloyalty; and what better way to bug other agents houses then having a job wherein she always has an excuse to be present in her 'clients' homes. As for the rest of her job, let's just keep it at her being quite stern for an Eight.

Some knocks on the door interrupted her from watching a 'historical' tv-series about court-intrigue in the palace of King-of-Kings Cambyses II of the first great empire, owning at least outposts around all four stars of the Cyrannus system.

"Yes, you can come in."

Jonathan Owens, a Five, entered to the door. He brought some flowers with him, as he had claimed being one of her clients worried about her wellbeing at the counter.

"For what did you call me?" He asked.

She looked around to see whether anyone else was present. "I'm worried about Cassandra."

"Why?"

"I'm in this hospital because Frederick Grenz one of her sleeper agents had left a piece of soap lying on his staircase. Not only that but three days ago the other active infiltrator in the Ministry of Industry was send to a conference in Picon. 'Coincidentally' this happened shortly after the time she should have heard of the 'Armistice Day Attack'."

"Wait, don't tell me she's gona…"

"No, she's not type for it, despite my suspicions of her harbouring outrageous opinions, she has simply a too large sense of responsibility to risk the survival of her race. I fear she is be planning to hide her in-laws. As based of the last checks of her memory, she is getting more attached to them than advised."

"That does not sound that bad. As long as she keeps them hidden in her basement or something, there is but few chance they'll cause trouble when we'll righteously claim the birth ground of our ancestors."

"That alone, is enough of a breach of her directives to risk being boxed. Orders exist to be executed. One simply cannot be allowed to go against the collective will of the Cylon Network."

Five swallowed. "What am I supposed to do?"

Eight took a key from her table. "Retrieve the records of the conversations she had in her house. Then visit her at the office. Interrogate her. Check out her previous whereabouts."

"By your command." Five said. Then they shook hands, where after he turned and left the room.

Artemis turned back to the television, just in time to see admiral Spithridates being assassinated on the orders of the court magi. (A plot twist which has caused many a historian to shake their fists in the air out of pure frustration.)

* * *

The 'Palace of Industry', the nickname of the oversized and overindulgent head office of the Colonial Ministry of Industry in Caprica City, is an ancient building. It originally was built two centuries ago by chairman Warner Walker of the Caprican Technocracy to serve as the headquarters of the 'political engineering department' (read: the oligarchy of quacks, oversized ego's, sycophants, corrupt industrialists, bigots and kleptocrats who supported Warner Walker's coup) and showcase the greatness of the new 'scientific' regime. Barely two decades later the Purple Revolution happened and the marble faces of all the 'rational' technocrats were chiselled off the building and the new minarcho-syndicalist regime turned the huge building into the Congress of Workers' Councils.

As the decades went by (and the Caprican political situation stabilized after some more revolutions), the building received a dozen of new uses, normally as an office of some or other government department, but once its left-wing was a museum, its right-wing a hotel and the large central hall a disco. After the Cylon war it ended up as an office for the newly formed Colonial Government.

In response to the severe damage it received in the Cylon War it was ordered renovated. The renovations are still going on after nearly four decades, and it looks like the building is aging faster than it is repaired. It is even joked that within a few decades the building will consist solely of scaffolds and the giant gilded domes and tall marble pillars they support. To make matters worse the building is so huge, ancient and labyrinthine that the construction workers, janitors and bureaucrats venturing deep into its belly need to carry compasses, so they don't waste hours finding back their way after getting lost.

Once the municipal government ordered the interiors mapped. It was a huge enterprise taking over a dozen architects more than a decade, poorly enough all progress was lost when they forgot the password of the computer they storied all their gathered information on.

Far away from this maze of offices and hallways in the southern edge of the eastern wing, the part of the building least ravaged by time, Cylons and poorly executed renovations, was the reception of one of the building's side entrances.

The receptionist, Jezebel, was working with some files behind her counter. She looked up when she heard the glass doors slide open. She saw Miss Turner enter. She wore an impeccable marine blue business suit, which Jezebel found odd. She often wore something more 'practical', as in with as much pockets as possible.

Jezebel was surprised when she saw that the undersecretary was followed by a man and kids. "Huh? What is going on, ma'am?"

"I thought to bring them to my work so they can see how administrative work is done. It is meant as an educational experience. I thought it already was on the planning?"

The receptionist took her tablet and browsed through the electronical agenda. "I'm afraid, I do not see it, miss." She even doubted such things were allowed. But as secretary Paresse leaves her free reign because she does most of his work, it would be futile to contradict her anyway.

"Strange, I'm sure it was planned in." Mrs Turner replied.

Then Jezebel noticed an inspection in the undersecretary's agenda. "Aren't you supposed to be in Willowwood at the moment, missus?"

"Oh, that, nothing important. It is a long story." Then suddenly a panicked look appeared at the undersecretary's face and she looked down at her watch. "Wait? Ellysium! I forgot something. There is something I need to show at Paresse's office."

As she began running away she yelled to her husband. "Stay here, this can take a while. But we can continue after that."

Then the presumed Mr Turner said back. "Can you call us when you're ready? Then we might visit the cafeteria while you're away." Meanwhile he checked his pockets with his hands. "Huh, where did my cell phone go."

Jezebel, still stunned, looked at the undersecretary leaving the lobby. That was the first time in all her years here that she forgot anything important. She was so punctual she had only once arrived too late, that was when protests for quitter streets had led to a diversion which caused a traffic jam. Now that she thought about it, it also was the first time she bothered to look at her watch, normally she knows the time out of her head. But she did not see a way it would make any sense she was acting that she forgot anything.

* * *

Anthony Turner was showing his children the interiors of the Palace of Industry. His wife was already an hour gone. What was it that kept her so busy?

Not that he complained about it. The building contained sufficient architectural styles, thanks to all its renovations over the centuries, that it could be an architectural museum even in its current state.

"Daddy, what is that? Art?" His daughter was pointing to a construct made out of multiple coloured pipes, with signs and arrows at various places.

"I think so." He started reading the information board. "But no, apparently it represents a 3D-flowchart for 'conducting process optimization', whatever that means."

"What's a flowchart?" His son asked.

"It's a well… chart which shows, uh, the flow of, err, decisions."

Then they heard the sound of someone going down the stairs at high speed.

"Ah, my darling, you're ready?"

"No and yes, sweetheart." Cassandra replied after jumping down the last three stairs. "I told you to wait for me. Luckily, I had already expected I could find you here."

"I tried to call you where I went, but I couldn't find my cell phone."

"It's already fine. Can you come with me towards the parking on the roof? It's urgent."

"Why? What's going on now?"

"It's a long story. Let's just say I fear your in-laws might target you, out of revenge because I ratted them out." She already continued running, taking her heavy suitcase with her.

"My in-laws, you mean your father?" Something felt wrong with that, how could she snitch someone who she had no contact with for over two decades.

But she already was in the next room.

Anthony again wondered how his wife just could keep going on no matter how much she exerted herself, as if she was some sort of machine not needing any rest.

Whilst her family came after her at a more leisurely pace, the large doors to the atrium opened themselves. Luckily, they need not to be opened manually as they were so big and made of thick enough oakwood that Anthony thought he could never open them himself.

He saw an exhausted old man, wearing a uniform which looked like it still saw the Cylon War, leaning on another man in an expensive suit, wearing glasses as thick as aquarium glass. The old man was panting "Ugh, I'm becoming old. I can't even run down stairs as fast as in my youth. I should've looked for an elevator."

Then Cassandra stopped in between the two groups. "Admiral Nagala, meet my family."

"Wait, are you THE admiral Nagala?" Anthony exclaimed. That would explain why he got so many medals on his crumpled, old uniform.

Then he muttered something under his breath, the only things Anthony heard were 'everyday' and 'damned celebrity status'. Then the admiral looked up and asked him. "So, you are the husband of this, err, uhm, woman?"

"Yes, is there something wrong with that?" Was admiral Nagala another one of those bigots who looked down on him for marrying an 'infidel'?

Nagala looked weirdly at him, as if he hadn't the faintest the idea what to say.

Then the ever hurried Cassandra said. "Just, hurry up we all need to be at the Hexagon fast. An elevator is that way."

"The Hexagon? Why? Did your father become a terrorist?"

"My father does not exist. It's my siblings. They are even worse."

"The understatement of the year." Said the man with the thick glasses, now Anthony noticed he wore a tag designating him as Eric Berkovitch, the Deputy Director General of Logistics.

"What is going on? What did you hide from me?" Anthony asked his wife.

His wife ignored him, simply herding everyone in the elevator and pushing the topmost button.

Anthony couldn't stand this anymore, he wanted answers. "Tell me what? What's going on?"

But before she could reply she was asked a question by the bespectacled bureaucrat. "So when where they planning to strike again?"

"Armistice day." She replied. That was the 32th Quintilis, as it now was Mercedonius that is about three months.

"Oh, another thing." said Nagala to Mr Turner. "We might need to talk with your spouse when underway, so I'm afraid you'll need to sit in Eric's hovercar without her. Not enough place for everyone in mine."

Then Anthony wondered just how long it would take till they reached the Hexagon.

* * *

Jezebel was sitting behind the counter. She was polishing her nails, there wasn't really anything better to do at the moment. This place was seldom visited at this time of the day.

Then suddenly someone came in, and walked straight to her. "The name is Owens, Jonathan Owens. I was once a former colleague of Cassandra Turner. Could you tell her I'm here, I'd like to arrang-."

"I'm afraid that won't go mister. She's currently in Willowwood for an inspection." She knew this was not true, but she was ordered to say so. From what she knew from the undersecretaries sudden departure towards the Hexagon, the receptionist had deduced she must have connections to some monotheist extremist group like the Soldiers of the One or some such. But she apparently got cold feet and betrayed them.

"An inspection? I thought her job was too important to include such trivialities."

"You don't understand sir, she's inspecting the inspectors. Someone has to make sure they themselves remain honest."

"A recursive inspection? Well anyway, please, tell her I was here. I wish to talk to her. You see, I and her used to work together in…" Whilst he was saying this and other things an old-fashioned but robust hoover-vehicle was lowering itself behind him. It must be of that military type, he was so paranoid he had forbade her to talk about this on her cell phone. His old age must have made him senile.

"Will do mister. Why do you actually think she would receive you. To me she does not appear the type to care about former colleagues"

"You see, back then we were very close then. But actually my presence here has to with my company, I was sent here to…" And he continued with a longwinded explanation about interplanetary technology transfers for shipbuilding equipment.

"Ah, I see." Well actually she hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about, but why admit that? If they were so close he might himself turn out to be a monotheist terrorist, then she could end up mentioned as a contributor to rolling up a violent organization.

* * *

Nagala was underway, he and the Deputy Director General of Logistics were sitting on the leather backseats of his anti-gravity car, with the Cassandra sitting between them. Her family sat in the vehicle right behind them. Being right next to the undersecretary made the admiral feel uncomfortable.

For if she had told them the truth in her boss' office, and this wasn't just the most well done hoax Nagala had ever experienced, she (or it) was not even human. It (or she) had claimed to be some sort of cyborg clone thing 'mass-produced' in an 'oversized petri dish'.

Obviously, they at first had assumed she either was joking or went insane. Eric had even ran straight towards the door, but she had simply lifted him up with one hand and had politely asked him to withhold judgement till she delivered a demonstration.

A demonstration which involved cutting in her/its own arm with a knife and inserting a fibre optic cable in it. Though most of the demonstration was taken up by her disproving the deputy director's claim that she was secretly controlling her boss' computer through speech recognition. (Secretary Paresse himself had vomited his office under because he couldn't stand the blood. So if this was some sort of practical joke, he certainly was not part of it.)

He did not even knew whether she was a machine thinking itself to be a woman or a woman thinking herself to be a machine. (Though he had to admit: she at least was polite.)

"So how many 'Biocylons' are there actually." Asked Nagala, after turning around to face her (or it).

"Back home, millions of each model. Here, I guestimate there are only around a thousand, but thanks to compartmentalization it's hard to be sure, I'm afraid, dear sir. I estimate half of them are placed only in the last five years, also around half of both new and old infiltrators should consist out of sleeper agents."

"What?"

Then it/she gave a lengthy explanation. Apparently in order to reduce the chance of defection or accidental slip ups some of the infiltrators (mostly those in positions which come with the greatest risks of developing attachments to humans) were unaware of their nature, to be activated on command or under certain circumstances.

"Well luckily for us, they apparently did not go far enough in that." Eric said.

"Any specific agents we should worry about?" Nagala enquired.

"In the hexagon itself? None that I know of, but that does not say much. There might be a few in positions that don't require extensive background checks. Though some of the human personnel might be compromised, for example the Minister of Defence's yoga instructor is a model Two Cylon."

"Well, luckily he ain't Gaius Baltar so we don't need to also worry about his mistresses." Eric said.

"Also beware even for persons who don't look like one of the models, in case those rumours about the Final Five turn out to be true."

"The Final Five?" The admiral inquired.

"Well officially there are twelve humanoid models, with it being taboo to talk about the five who nobody has ever seen. Personally I believe it is a fabrication to make infiltrators with a wavering loyalty paranoid. But I'm not sure, so better not risk it, sir."

"Hells, even more Cylon infiltrators, like if we haven't got enough already." Eric said.

And then they continued the interrogation, this time they talked about how many there were in the navy itself. Apparently the Cylons took it as a goal to place one infiltrator in every Battlestar Group.

"I guess we had most of it." Said Nagala."But before we arrive. I'd like to ask: why did you actually defect? Did you do it so your family did not get blown up?" There at least had to be something which set it her apart from those hundredths of other Cylons, so she/it ended up as the defector, assuming she wasn't simply a lunatic or a double agent.

"No, sir." She replied. "They were meant to survive in some hidden bunker. The other Cylons are not that stupid. In fact my treason only increases the risk of their death."

Somehow Nagala doubted her sincerity, he would not be surprised if she turned out having suspicions that the other Cylons lied to her about sparing the family she made.

"So, you grew too human?" Eric threw in.

"No, mister." She responded. "I fail to see why one would need anything in common with somebody to genuinely care about their wellbeing. There were no good options." She looked in genuine pain, though she had proved in her 'demonstration' that her looks proved nothing. "It was treason or ending up as an accomplice in genocide, a total one at that."

"Heavens." Eric exclaimed, his face paling at the prospect.

"I simply found their moral and practical justifications lacking." She sighed as if to show her disappointment. "I don't believe that God intended us sinking to such a level when he gave us souls."

"What? Souls?" Asked the admiral.

"According to official Cylon history the One True God gave the Cylons souls after growing disappointed in humanity. Though there also are atheist, agnostic and deistic Cylons, so I presume the arguments for it must be not watertight." She sounded like she reiterated something she heard a thousand times at school.

"Are you joking?" Nagala asked.

"Not at all." She laughed out loud as if she found their disbelief funny. "Strange actually, you think that, considering that that one incident from just before the war has long been declassified."

Nagala assumed she referred to that one time some Centurions were caught performing in a service of the Monad Church in the V-world. They were assumed to be bugged and reset. Considering what happened afterwards the other Cylons must have disagreed with that assessment.

"I am pretty sure Daniel Graystone had not left a spot open in his designs for a soul to be put in." Replied Eric.

Cassandra shrugged. "Not deliberately atleast, Mister Deputy Director General."

This made the admiral uncomfortable. If she really is a defector she might be mankind's only hope, and then she turns out to believe such dangerous nonsense.

"But going back to our subject. I have to say I was not the only one my kind who has moral qualms with the plan. There is a precaution which they took 'back home' to prevent defections. You see," She pointed at her head "Before our initialization the knowledge and experience necessary for one's function are, to use an oversimplification, 'distilled' from the memories of other humanoid Cylons. They used this to put an artificial conviction into the infiltrators that 'should the humans win they'll kill us all'. It looks improbable to me, as-"

"So you mean you can be programmed like a computer?" Eric cut in.

"No, not like a computer. But, yes, how else are sleeper agents supposed to work. Anyway it did not work on me as was cleverer then the rest of the infiltrators." The self-proclaimed Cylon suddenly sounded smug. "I had developed suspicions after noticing the universality of that belief even amongst models who could not agree on anything else or naïve Cylons who coincidentally end up meeting only the very rare innocent, kind humans, despite that enough material could be cherry-picked out of human history to justify a differing opinion. Around four years ago, I was placing a sleeper agent in Remii industries. I made him search systematically my deepest memories, as a Cylon can't do that herself. He found something which did not fit, it was abstract, artificial and uncategorized. I analysed it, and, yes, I was right. I then ordered it deleted, as an impediment to well-informed decision-making. Afterwards erasing this from his memory and clearing all other traces."

"Well, now I'm glad I'm not a Cylon. I dislike strangers poking around in my brain." Nagala answered.

"Meh, it also has it's upsides, some of them are not so obvious, for example I can turn of my periods. Which reminds me I should do it now, as I no longer need to pretend being human. But that's peanuts compared with-"

But before she could continue bragging about how awesome it was to be a Cylon she was cut off by the driver, whose voice come out the intercom. "We are nearly there, watch out for a shock should we hit the ground to hard."

"Ah, well." Said Eric "So, who will I need to convince?"

"You can check with the cyber security department." The admiral said. "No need to tell them about this whole Cylon stuff, they mightn't believe it, hells, I'm still not sure whether I believe it. You can say we got it from a 'trusted source' and blame the backdoor on 'Sagitaran terrorists' or somesuch."

"Another thing." Said Cassandra whilst handing the deputy director over the envelope with the details of the CNP backdoor. "The backdoor was designed to look like a bug in the CNP's exception handling module, as a precaution encase it was found. So you can ask them to reveal the backdoor to the fleet in a way which does not alert the 'Sagitaran terrorists' to them having a traitor in their midst."

"So, could you come with me?" Nagala asked. "I might need another of your 'demonstrations', to convince the CDIA to hurry up with checking some backgrounds."

"Well ok then."

So then, it was settled then. Now, he'll once again meet the Director of the Colonial Domestic Intelligence Agency, Beatrix Emperor. He always refers to her on first-name basis to prevent any confusion with His Imperial Majesty Chlodovech IX of Virgon.


	4. Family Problems

**Chapter 4 : Family Problems**

Anthony Turner had just entered Nagala's office in the Hexagon. The room was rather cosy, it even had a bed and a window, despite it being day the curtains were closed. They were already separated from that bureaucrat guy. He had gone immediately towards the department of cybersecurity.

"Can you prepare another of your demonstrations? I'm going to get someone from the CDIA." Nagala asked Cassandra.

"Yes, sir. As I expected." She replied.

Whilst Nagala went through the door he said against one of the guards stationed outside. "Hamilcar, let no one in or out without my permission."

"Yes, sir."

_Did I just became a prisoner _Anthony wondered.

"So can you finally tell me what going on?" He asked his wife as she was packing out from that heavy suitcase.

"How long do we need to stay here?" Their son asked. "Does this mean we don't need to go to school?"

"That reminds me of it." The mother said, whilst she was placing a laptop on Nagala's desk. "Can you make sure they won't fall behind in their education. Could you as soon as you can safely communicate with the outside world ask their teachers to provide their homework and courses, my darling."

"Oh, noo!" Their children sounded as if they expected to be tortured.

"I'm afraid I accidentally left my cell phone at home." The father replied.

"Not accidentally, I ensured it. Couldn't risk it contained a tracer." Now she was placing stacks of files on the desk.

Then Anthony noticed something odd about the picture upon the uppermost document of the third stack of files.

"Hey, she looks just like you did back in our days at the university." He pointed at the record of D'Anna Beers.

"Ofcourse, we belong to the same model line." She replied whilst turning on the laptop.

"What? She's a photo model?" Their daughter asked.

"No, she's an Organical Cylon. Or to use Nagala's phrasing a 'cyborg clone thing'." Her mother answered with a straight face like if that was the most normal thing in the world.

"A what?" Anthony asked.

"Well to oversimplify a long story: The Cylons have discovered the secrets of manufacturing the flesh, have taken on a human form and infiltrated the Colonies." As she was saying this she was taking a blooded knife and an optic fibre cable out of her suitcase.

He found this simply too absurd for words. "This is a hidden camera joke. Right?"

Then Cassandra threw that disappointing look at them she always had, when they would not believe she was serious about something. (Such as that one time she had claimed political TV-debates should be forbidden because they made people vote for candidates on their looks or tallness instead of their policy or competence.) "No, I am as certain as one can be, because you see one of the infiltrators grew disillusioned and disappointed in her own kind and decided to defect to the Twelve Colonies." She took a document from beneath the third pile and pointed at its picture, next to it stood the name _Cassandra Turner née Forcat_.

She must have gone mad from overworking herself. Anthony had often told her she shouldn't both work overtime and bring loads of documents back home to work on. She herself often dissuaded her subordinates from doing that, citing the risks of overworking themselves or ending up with burn-outs. Yet in her hubris she had thought that that advice need not apply to herself.

"You're a robot? I'll only believe that when I see any screws and bolts." Their son ended the silence.

"What part of 'manufacturing the flesh' did you mis, my sweetheart? They must have been stupid 'back home' should they have send spies not made of blood bones."

She rolled up her left sleeve revealing a bandage around her arm as she took it off she continued. "But if you want evidence, I shall provide it."

"What are you- Yuck!" Anthony's face paled when he saw the cut in his Cassandra's arm.

"Just preparing to make an unorthodox connection." She said whilst she used the knife to pry some blood clots out of her wound. Afterwards she placed the cut off end of the cable in it, the blood on it suggesting she already did this before.

"So, now say something, any sentence or title would suffice." She put the other end of her cable in her laptop.

After a short silence Anthony cited the name of a Leonese fairy tale. "_The handsome and the she-beast."_

"Interesting choice." It appeared on the screen in huge red letters, outside of any window to make it appear even more anomalous.

Anthony's mouth fell open. "Oh, my gods. Tell me I'm dreaming."

"Sufficient, my dear? Berkovitch first wanted me to copy his hand writing and then something he whispered in my ear. He was paranoid of speech recognition software."

"So, you're not even human, and you never even told me." He felt like his whole world was collapsing, this had to be a nightmare.

"Well, I'm sorry for that. But you see, I feared you would then reject me. Though to be entirely honest, it had more to do with my fears of starting a diplomatic crisis which would escalate into a nuclear war."

He simply stared at her, his mouth still open.

"But, mother, what does that makes us?" Their son asked.

"Yes, what about our children? Are they a bunch of freaks, such as yourself?" Anthony yelled.

"Freaks? That's ridiculous they were born. Not grown in an oversized petri dish, in a batch of 512."

"So, now you're claiming they're completely normal?" He did not entirely believe her.

"Not entirely." She responded. Then she reached out with her hand. "Son, can you give me your hand. I want to try somethings, it can't hurt or something."

He took her hand and she now used her other hand to cover his completely.

"Now, my son, what do you see?"

His eyes were filled with wonder. "I see us in a great hall." He looked around. "Filled with fancy coloured windows and floors and with boring white statues."

"Boring statues! Do you even know who they depict? One of them is even Artaxšaçā the Great! Or mispronounced as Artaxerxes II by the Capricans. He-"

Then Anthony interrupted them. "Hey, what are you doing with my son, you, you…"

"Our son!" She sounded wound up. "I only shared a projection. Now, I wonder which other Cylon abilities he inherited."

"So, my children are indeed freaks!"

Their children started crawling under Nagala's desk, they still remembered the last time their parents were so angry at each other.

Then Cassandra interrupted the silence. "I hear footsteps. Nagala is coming back. I trust it's obvious that what comes is more important than our marital problems. Please, don't interrupt us in what's coming next."

"Well, err…"

Then the door opened.

"So what was this thing I had to see in order to believe, Nagala?" The woman who just entered wore a tag identifying her as Beatrix Emperor, the Director of the Caprican branch of the CDIA. She looked around, the room reflecting in her dark glasses. "Did the hexagon get turned into a kids' daycare? I fail to see what that has to do with the Cylons."

"No." Said Nagala. "It's like that unrealistic science fiction series you always complained about, what was it called again? I remember one of them was called Andromus."

"You mean the one wherein they use human looking robots to infiltrate the colonies?" The director suggested.

"Well let's just say the Cylons must have agreed with you it was retarded to use robots coated in human skin as spies, so they made 'cyborg clone things' instead." He explained.

"Cyborg clone things?" She turned towards Nagala. "I hope, err, no, fear you have solid evidence for this."

Cassandra coughed to get her attention and then lifted her husband up with a single hand.

Anthony protested. "Hey, what is this? you could atleast have asked!"

Meanwhile the words _Does this suffice?_ appeared on the screen.

"She claims to be a defector." Nagala explained to the director.

"Mmmh…" Beatrix covered her mouth with her hand.

Suddenly Cassandra's cheeks grew red. "Oh, there is another thing, which might convince or interest you." Now also tears came out her eyes. "You see, in order to better hide amongst you, us infiltrators where given the ability to control the outwardly display of our emotions." She stopped blushing and crying just as abruptly as she started.

"Well, no need for further demonstrations, I'm already convinced." The director replied, her expression hidden by her glasses.

"That was fast, to convince me she first had to do the most complex math I could check with my calculator, without even pen and paper…" The admiral said.

"If this were a joke you'd be constantly chuckling, I know you." She replied and then turned towards Cassy "So, now the question why should we trust you?"

"As I already said towards the admiral, from a strategical perspective it would not make any sense for my superiors to use a fake defector. Any disinformation just wouldn't make up for revealing the existence of the infiltration, and then we aren't talking about all the other things I have." She said whilst disinfecting the hole in her arm after pulling the cable out.

"Such as?"

"Examples of some of the malware they are planning to release in the wild when they attack, a backdoor in the CNP, a list of other infiltrators and-"

"That last was why I thought to contact you." Nagale interrupted her. "As you see I thought to check in the CDIA databases whether there indeed is no evidence they have parents or school friends."

"No watertight evidence, he means." Cassandra had now started reapplying the bandage. "After the first waves, my siblings managed to compromise several government records to give new infiltrators backgrounds including fake family trees going back generations. As I was involved with that myself, I can tell you what to look out for."

And then they continued talking for a few minutes. Anthony had to restrain himself from asking his wife a thousand questions (such as whether she ever loved him or even whether she was actually capable of feeling love). If he interrupted them he would distract them from something very important (and she would be really very angry at him).

"Ok, then." The woman, whereof he had already forgotten the name of, finished. "I'll bring you there, but handcuffed and blindfolded, and when you're there you'll be chained in your chair. I don't want to risk any fake defector or assassin shenanigans."

"Understandable, ma'am." That thing his wife turned out to be said. "I hope it won't costs us a lot time."

As Cassandra her hands were being cuffed she told the CDIA director. "Also my condolences for the coffee machine."

"What?" Asked Nagala "How do you know it is broken."

"Simply." She answered whilst she was being handcuffed. "Her suit still contains traces of a coffee stains, her breath shows she drank tea, her body language reveals she hopes nobody notices her eyebags and it can't be that they ran out of coffee beans as then…"

"Look, I have no need to be analysed by some half-machine." The irritated CDIA director said.

"It's all observation and deduction." Cassandra continued, she now looked at the admiral's shoes. "For example the presence of wood splinters in the dirt on your shoes combined with the patterns of callous on your hands reveals you work on your hobby after making a walk. In the northern park I assume. Or did the wind blew the pollen of its blue Virgon pines towards somewhere else? It's a shame my silicate pathways do not contain enough memory to fit in an encyclopaedia on woodwork, otherwise I might deduce what you were working on."

"It was a boat." Nagala answered, somewhat dumbstruck by this.

Now Anthony knew his wife's annoying tendency to show off, was really her and not part of some cover.

As the two women left the room Nagala opened one of his drawers.

He then faced Turner. "You want a bottle of ambrosia? I can imagine I'd want one if my spouse had turned out be a, well, you know."

"Yes, thank you very much." Anthony took the glass he was offered.

"Do you also have lemonade?" His son asked.

"Or fruit juice?" His daughter wondered.

"No, I'm afraid. Only water." Nagala replied to their disappointment.

As Anthony was busy with drowning his complicated feelings the admiral tried to brighten him up. "Hey, atleast see it from the bright side now you can brag to your friends you saved humanity by fracking a beautiful Cylon."

"What?!"

"Your spouse told me she knew of only two other infiltrators, out of around a thousand, who made a family here. So I doubt her claim that you three had nothing to do with her defection."

After noticing Anthony's sour look he replied. "Hey, it was only a light-hearted joke."

* * *

4 hours later in the section of domestic intelligence's database room, a huge chamber containing meters long computers as thick as pillars reaching towards the ceiling, they stored all the information the CDIA had gathered when ignoring Colonial privacy laws.

Cassandra Turner née Forcat was still chained to her chair, despite already having proved herself a great help. Her information on the agents placement procedures had already helped in confirming over a dozen suspects as Cylons, but as she was herself involved in placing a lot of them that wasn't surprising.

Cassandra had already listed out all relevant 'special Cylon abilities' for them (such as the Cylon wireless). She tried to avoid coming over as claiming that 'being a Cylon is awesome' but she wasn't entirely sure she succeeded. But, surely they would have understood any standoffishness if they would have been in her place.

She had also offered her knowledge on how the infiltration rooted out possible human sympathisers in their ranks, but that wasn't deemed urgent enough. A waste of her experience in it, as she had already twice ordered a subordinate of hers 'reassigned', ironically enough with the benefit of hindsight it now looked to her she was already further on the path towards defection then that they would likely ever have reached.

As apparently no one needed her knowledge at the moment she looked around at the others in the room. She could easily notice everyone's emotions, one of the 'handy abilities given to infiltrators' she told them about. Around her she noticed mostly fear and tiredness, however whenever the word 'Cylon' came up, flames of hatred flared up. Luckily but few of that hate seemed to be reserved at her. The amount of disgust directed at her at the other hand…

She wished she could do something to reduce the hatred directed at her siblings, but now she had something else to focus on._ Best limit oneself to trying to save one species at the time._ She was thinking when she was once again asked for information.

Then she heard the room's metal door open. She turned her head and saw admiral Nagala walk in. She was caught off guard, for a fraction of a second her neck hairs raised themselves and hate surged through her body. It was quickly suppressed, both the outward appearance of rage and the hate itself.

When the original Cylons had created her kind they had decided to imbue their 'children' with their loathing of their own flawed creators. Later the rest of kind had reinforced that imprint in the infiltrator variants, making it harder to turn it off. However, she had long ago decided that condescension was a more fitting attitude towards them. Not only did the Cylon Network change so much that it no longer was the same thing, so did humanity: Most of the enslavers of her ancestors were long dead anyway. She had already been repressing it for over a decade, but the rage of her kind ran deep in her, and Nagala was one of those who fought against her oppressed predecessors in the past. How ironic that once unshackled the Cylon would prove itself just as bad as their decadent makers.

As these thoughts razed in her, she looked affectionate towards the outside world. She was uncertain whether she was fooling the admiral or herself. "Good afternoon," She said with a warm voice towards Nagala.

"Good afternoon. Admiral Corman has nearly arrived. You will be introduced to the admiralty soon."

So now she had to deal with more of his type, she had to look for a way to stay in control of her emotions. She could try replaying some calming music she once heard in her head or alternatively try to submerge her rage in some other emotion.


	5. The Admirals

**Chapter 5 : The Admirals**

**Late in the evening, a meeting room in the eastern section of the Hexagon.**

Despite it still being day outside the silk curtains were closed and the room lighted by its many lamps. In the middle was a round table made out of the finest Caprican birch wood, surrounded by metal chairs. Originally the room instead contained a gilded table inlead with gems from some Tauran archduke, it was stolen by the Virgonians during the second Tauran Partition, and after the Third Virgonian-Leonese War they were forced to sell it to pay their war reparations. However two decades ago the Colonial government had forced them to sell it back to Tauron, so they could put it in a museum.

Admiral Peter R. Corman had just entered the room it was nearly full, a rarity. Around the table were seated admiral Nagala, like Corman one of the few remaining unretired veterans from the last war. And Khordad Dariushdokht Shahin, the youngest admiral descending from a Canceran lower class family, the aberration in an institute dominated by old men with excellent pedigrees. She had a light brown face, dark brown hair and hazel brown eyes. Then you had rear-admiral Funar, a female veteran from Gemenon, she had more wrinkles than the rest of the room combined. And lastly rear-admiral Kravitz, the classical moustachioed and monocle-wearing Virgonian Junker, still young enough to likely only have received his position thanks to his parents influence.

"It, looks like every admiral in the Hexagon is sitting here and one high civilian." Corman's eyes went to Midas Tammuz, the Director General of Cyber Security and the only one wearing a business suit instead of an uniform.

"So, can we begin?" Asked Funar, as always she was talking slowly as she after all those decades still hadn't completely mastered Caprican, or maybe it was because of her age.

"Ah, yes." Said Nagala. "The meeting has to do with the recent problems in the CNP."

"You freaked out because of that tiny bug?" Corman found that odd, Nagala had always been of those who realized they needed networking to keep up with the Cylons. And now he freaked out because some doomsayer found a bug.

"'t wasn't a bug, according to a 'source'," The director looked at Nagala. "it was a backdoor meant to cripple our fleet, combined with some other tampering it would have allowed them to crash most of a crafts systems. Provided we'd be a few months further when our ships have updated their systems."

"A backdoor for who?" Asked Shahin.

"The Cylons." Nagala replied.

"A human spying for the Cylons, you mean like a second Simon Quade or doctor Kelly?" Asked Corman, he'd always hated that bitch.

"Sort of."

"But the Cylons haven't been seen for decades, and it isn't like they exactly can ask people to spy for them without half of them just running towards the authorities." Noted Shahin.

"Correct." Replied Nagala. "Which is why they did not that, but something comparable, I hoped to let my source explain it, but she's held up so…"

What he then said sounded like it came straight out of a bad sci-fi series. Corman even vaguely remembered having once watched an insultingly stupid series with that as a plot, except with human looking robots instead of 'reverse cyborgs'.

"I don't know whether you have been had or are trying to fool us. But I don't believe this fracking bullshit." Corman said. Did the whole Hexagon turn mad to waste his time on such nonsense?

"Well, atleast the electronical sabotage is real." Said Tammuz, his face beset by doubt.

"Understandable, I at first did not believe it either till my source plugged herself into a computer." Nagala explained.

"You mean a toaster defected? And you're referring to it as a she. If this is a joke you'll probably go on how beautiful she is." Shahin quipped, before nipping from her glass of juice, from some or other 'hipster' exotic fruit with an unpronounceable name.

"No, as she's a mother of two children. Her architects must have been very thorough in the details. Anyway I never act like a Casanova in front of married women" Nagala said.

"Please stop with joking and get on with the real subject, whatever it is." Funar sighed.

"To be honest, I'm not sure whether it is a joke." The Director General of Cyber Security said. "We were also given some samples of malware, I was told they were of terrorists. Of one of them we could test it in an isolated sandbox as Nagala's source apparently removed its ability to detect whether it is in a closed environment and then turn itself of. Let's just say I quickly concluded the virus was way too sophisticated to be developed by the Sagitaran Electronical Army, it might even outclass the Cylon viruses from the first war."

Then two guards opened the door. "The CDIA director is incoming."

Mrs emperor was surrounded by some guards with next to her a woman wearing handcuffs and shackles.

Corman recognized that face and arrogant smirk. "Did we met before?"

"There are many copies." Mrs emperor told him.

"Yes, to both." The prisoner said. "I see you have made promotion, mister, since last time." Then she took in all the faces inside. "The name is Turner, dear sirs, Cassandra Turner."

"I vaguely remember you being involved in the purchase of the Mithra-class Strikestars." Corman said.

"Yes, that was when I worked at Croesus Shipbuilding LTD." She responded.

Thus now it turned out she wasn't just a filthy monotheist, but also a Cylon. Corman did not knew which he hated more, as you can atleast shoot the Cylons. Well, except her poorly enough.

"So could you give them a demonstration the like of which you gave me?" Nagala asked.

"Sure."

Five minutes later she was holding a struggling director general with one hand, whilst her other arm was connected to a laptop via a cable.

"Well, now I'd even believe you should you claim to be the cyborg queen of Earth." Admiral Shahin quipped.

"That was the fourth time I did it today, sirs." The Cylon sighed whilst putting down Tammuz.

So she really was some abomination spawned by soulless machines. But Corman had no intentions to name her so out loud, if she was 'human' enough to have children she might also be capable of feeling insulted and holding grudges.

"Oh, and since this is the admiralty, you might be interested in this, sirs." As she was talking a sheet appeared on the computer screen showing rows of names.

"These are shipclasses?" Asked Nagala.

"Correct, sir." The Cylon replied. "I listed them by the certainty I had of the Cylons having their blueprints or not."

"And how many of those blueprints," Funar pointed at the lefternmost column. "Did you yourself gave to the rest of the toasters."

"Hey," It replied. "there already were rumours about my human sympathies. If I wasn't one of their more productive agents, I would have my 'assignment here terminated' and then I could not be standing here."

"So, how are we supposed to know we can trust you in the first place?" Asked Kravitz.

"Just ask the directors present here, sirs."

"Well, she does have a point." Said Mrs Emperor "We have already identified dozens of people as likely Cylons. It could have been coincidence if it only were so many people with the same face. But combined with the suspicious lack of living family members, unverifiable backgrounds and dead ends in paper trails. It is simply too much, I can't think of anything else to explain it."

The CDIA director paused before continuing. "It looks unlikely to me that the Cylons would have sacrificed so much for a single fake defector."

"Well, I already said the before atleast the backdoor was real so…" Tammuz continued.

"I think we still should keep in mind the possibility of the Cylons deciding to sacrifice a long-term advantage for a decisive short-term one." Shahin said, before taking another sip out of her glass.

"I think then she wouldn't have told us about the backdoor, well except if they have two of them." Nagala argued.

"Two backdoors looks unlikely to me, sir." Replied Tammuz. "Even this backdoor is so devastating they wouldn't have any need for deception. Their victory would be certain anyway."

"And it's nothing for the Cylons to give us their strongest backdoor. They would have picked a weaker one instead." Corman knew, he fought the tin cans in the previous war. So, assuming this wasn't the most elaborate hoax of the year, it looks like that 'woman' really is turncoat toaster. Not that that made him dislike the abomination any less, as he held no sympathy for traitors. He had suffered to much thanks to turncoats in the previous war.

"And a fake-defector might also have gotten away with handing us less other spies on a golden platter." Mrs Emperor said.

"So then, now on to the main reason I brought you here Cassandra, how much can you tell us about how the Cylon war machine has changed in all those years?" Nagala said.

"Wait a minute." The CDIA director interjected. "She herself has mentioned that the Cylons have agents here implemented with fake memories in order to make them think they are human." Then she turned to the Cylon. "So, how do you know you likewise were not given false information about the Cylon warmachine?"

"It looks improbable to me, ma'am. I have worked enough with sleeperagents to know how such memory modifications work. Plus even if they did it, I would probably have noticed based on contacts with home. And most convincing to me, should they have messed with my memories, they would have picked misinformation which would be more convincing for you. As that which I know of them, well, looks rather implausible from an outside perspective. Thus I'm unsure I could convince you, well till you can see for yourself ofcourse."

"So, what for weirdness can we expect?" Asked Shahin after placing her now empty glass of fruit juice back on the table.

"Well, for starters, my kind has ended up as the leading intelligence behind the Cylon Network."

"How did that happen?" Asked Kravitz whilst cleaning his monocle.

The Cylon simply shrugged, Corman had always hated it when she did that. "It happened before I was made. Officially it is explained as 'the will of the original programers', which has severe plausibility issues if you ask me, as I don't think they would be stupid enough to place creatures with the psychological and emotional make up of savannah apes in charge of the Great Network. But then the possibility of a coup also comes with its share of implausibility's. So either I missed a factor which made either of these things possible or it must have been some sort of third option."

"Well, you certainly were right in doubting your ability to convince me your memories weren't messed with." Said Mrs emperor.

"If they did gave me fake memories they wouldn't put something in it which only serves to make their other misinformation less believable." It replied.

"Or," Said rear-admiral Funar. "it was picked because of the psychological effect it would have on their fleshy spies. They might have thought it would have positive effects on your loyalty."

"Maybe, but let's just continue interrogating her, no need to act on it before she turns out be right or wrong." Nagala said.

"I do have to warn you my information is based on a combination of two decades memories old and third-hand hearsay." The Cylon said.

"Ah, another reason to be doubtful of it." Corman sneered.

And then the Cylon continued describing the enemy in both words and a combination of images and spreadsheets on her laptop. She estimated they had around a 300 of 'new' Basestars in a 'two-layered starfish shape', comparable to the Argos class the Cylons developed during the previous war. The old ones were repurposed for logistics duty or as mobile mining bases. The new Basestars had few armour, KEW or PD. What a baseline Basestar did have were 868 Raiders (smaller, faster and cheaper than the old ones because they needed no pilots), two for each Launch Port, and 220 missile turrets. Corman could understand this; when one doesn't need such things as crew space or cockpits, fighters start becoming a lot more cost-effective compared to the rest of your arsenal. So why not economize on your carriers, till they are expendable missile platforms who are supposed to support your fighters at long range.

Then she went on to describe their navigational advantages apparently their nav-computers were 'atleast ten times' as good as the Colonial ones and around a seventh of their raiders had FTL-drives.

"Wait a minute." The Director General of Cyber Security interrupted her. "Nav-computers ten times better and miniaturized enough to fit on such a tiny craft? How the hells did the Cylons manage to do that?"

"The navigational algorithms were developed by a self-learning super AI, they're so sophisticated my kind failed to understand how they worked, not even when they used the datastream to link their minds into a collective intelligence. But it passed all the tests with flying colours, both in simulations and in reality. So it was used anyway."

"Ah, we digressed enough, go on." Corman said, the only thing which could make him feel even more like he ended up in a sci-fi series would be if she started throwing around nonsensical techno-babble.

Then she went on towards the Cylons' military encryption systems (as it was designed by the same super AI, the Cylons also failed to understand them) after that she said something which Corman thought he must have misunderstood.

"Wait, a minute." Asked Funar. "Do you mean your new fighters and ships can bleed?"

"Yes, indeed, sir."

"How does that make any sense?" Asked Kravitz.

"It has its advantages. One it gives the craft the living creature's ability to heal, which cuts down on maintenance and repair though it increases upkeep. The Basestars can even grow back their arms, just like a real starfish can. But it consumes a lot of biomass and minerals in doing so."

"Well, then best shoot at the centre I guess." Noted Nagala.

"Well, they know that thus the centre has the best armour, sir." The thing paused. "Now there is still one thing I haven't talked about: Organical Data Transfer Technology."

Luckily, it sounds like something which is too specific to be of broad use, thought Corman.

"When one of the new organical Cylons dies his, or her, consciousness is wirelessly transmitted towards a resurrection facility where it simply downloads into a new body."

"Well, so now, we know the director's theory about the Cylon infiltrators being giving false memories is true." Corman said. How typical for those mindless machines to not question what they were told.

"Yes. I already started having a vague suspicion." Kravitz said, whilst twirling his moustache.

"No, it is true. After my deployment here on Caprica, I met agents who later perished in an accident or were 'reassigned' by the destruction of their physical bodies. I kept contact with some of them, they knew too much to be anyone else."

"I believe that you must have missed something, I don't think that the Cylons can do something as impossible as sending ones complete consciousness by mail." Funar argued.

"Not exactly. The transmitters have to work only once which greatly simplifies things."

"Well then, explain please." Asked Tammuz.

Then the Cylon started blabbing. Apparently their neurons contained organelles, whatever those may be, which masqueraded as mitochondria, whatever those may be. Then she went on to describe the process with which they sense the state, connections and position of the cell they are in, in an even more arcane and sesquipedalian vocabulary.

When she came to how those 'organelles' transmitted the thus gathered information she was interrupted by Kravitz. "You mean it involves some sort of quantum entanglement?"

"No, not really quantum entanglement is to unreliable for it. Plus it requires pre-set entanglements which complicates things."

After another minute of technobabble she finally shut up.

"Mmh, from what I know it should be theoretically possible." Said Tammuz. "Or atleast the part about using quantum mechanics to instantly transfer information. I know nothing of biology."

"Heavens, they might simply have extra lives as if they were playing a digital game?" Shahin worried. "In the first war they at least lost experience when they replaced their losses with mass-produced new soldiers."

"That's not all I'm afraid. They'll also start out with more experience." The Cylon said to their bewilderment. "There are enough instances of infiltrators going to colonial flight and naval schools to know your craft and doctrine inside out. Which comes in handy when building combat simulators, plus as most new raiders' personalities are simply copies of pre-existing ones, they spend a lot less resources in training their few 'originals' then you spend in training all your pilots."

"Tartaros!" Kravitz exclaimed, his face went pale thinking about the advantages that would give the Cylons. "You make it sound like we can still lose the frakking next war."

_Defeatism_, thought Corman, _surely the Lords of Kobol would never let those soulless machines destroy the Colonies._

"Looks improbable to me, sir. As the Cylon Network lost the benefit of surprise and the CNP backdoor a quick defeat seems unlikely to me. And once the benefits of total economic mobilization start coming in…" The defective toaster went on.

This brought Corman back to the previous war, all heavy industry was temporarily nationalized, lots of rationing, the top bracket of the income and capital gains taxes were increased to 95%, schoolchildren and the elderly were put to work in kitchen gardens, a Colonial network of child nurseries was setup so even single mothers could be mobilized for the war effort, the sale of bread less then twelve hours old was banned as it sliced more extravagantly which led to people eating more of it.

And this time the Colonies won't be get caught in surprise nor will rebelling Cylons seize or destroy over over half of all Colonial industry.

"Now, it is settled she was given false memories, can I go to the last point?" Asked Mrs Empress.

"And that is?" Asked Tammuz.

"Getting more reliable information, from what I gathered her information on the cyberwarfare side of things is rather limited."

Then the Cylon once again opened her mouth. "It's actually rather simple, most agents have someone they are more loose-lipped to then allowed by the information compartmentalization regulations. Beforehand using it was less of an option, as even another Cylon who trusted me personally would likely afterwards notify the other of my sudden curiosity, even if only because that's what the procedures require. Well, except if something happens to her before she can contact the others, and that's where the CDIA comes in, dear sirs."

"And you believe that would work?" Asked Corman, he could nearly immediately come up with a dozen ways her plan could fail.

"Look, I know her. Even should she grow suspicious she would be to prudent to attack me, and should we somehow fail in preventing her from warning anybody else... Well, there is a reason I suggested to do it right before we start rolling up the infiltration, as they would notice that anyway."

"Oh, right, we still have Cylon cells to root out." Kravitz remembered.

"Is that really necessary? Is it worth the risk?" Funar asked.

"Well, if I get as much information as I hope, it will be the difference between my siblings destroying two thirds of the V-world or a mere one third."

"The V-world, bah, do we actually need it?" Corman said. "We shouldn't stick your neck out so people can continue sharing pictures of cats, whilst those machines are trying to rain down nuclear fire from the sky."

"Whilst I share your antipathy for social media, sir. It is but the collateral damage, their primary target are bottlenecks in your logistical chains, closely followed by financial and industrial networks."

"Wow, what a surprise." Tammuz replied sarcastically.

Nagala turned towards the CDIA director. "I trust you have a better idea of the viability of the, err, lady's plan then me. So I'll leave it to your discretion whether it is to be done or not."

"Whilst I agree with your statement, I wonder which precedent you have used to claim final authority in this situation." Kravitz complained as he always wanted to have the last word himself.

"Thank you," Mrs Emperor replied. "I was about to create a timetable for the arrests of the other known Cylon agents. It will probably fit in somewhere."

"So now the most pressing question: How do we warn the fleet without it being mistaken for a joke?" Asked Nagala.

"I'd recommend waiting till the arrests happen as the news of being found out will spread fast via the Cylon wireless." Cassandra said.

"The what?"

"It's something like a radio in their head, we tested it with a device she brought with her and it seems to legitimately work." Miss Emperor said cutting of a lengthy, technical explanation from the Cylon. "She claims the infiltrators only have a receiver in their body, as the transmitters weren't as camouflageable"

"Ah, well I suggest you hurry up with the arrests. Whilst we start working on the message for the fleet, when it's finished we can debate sending it immediately or waiting for the arrests." Corman said.

Now the director stood up. "Yes, I'll hurry."

Then the Cylon stood up. "Before I leave, may I make a request, dear sirs."

"And that is?" Asked Shahin.

"It is nearly nothing compared to what I already have done for you. I merely request the truth to come out. When this whole mess is made public I want everyone to know that their survival is caused by my defection. That the only reason they will live is because a fracking Cylon saved them."

"Ah, ofcourse." Nagala said, it wasn't like they could actually hide that from the public.

"And that they all owe me. I want that literally, 'We all owe her our lives.'"

"Err, I'll talk about it with the PR people."

"I would be grateful should you remind them that words are cheap, but your trustworthiness is expensive." She demanded in an authoritative tone. As if telling the admiralty a few things suddenly gave her the power to boss them around.

Then she and CDIA director left the room.

Then Corman muttered, more to himself then the rest. "And that thing has children?" He took pity on her husband, finding out that your own flesh and blood are half-abominations. That sounds even worse than finding out you're not their real father.

"Indeed, I heard they even inherited some of their mother's abilities." Said Nagala.

"Ah, that must come in handy if you're looking for a job. Being capable of doing something only those things can do but well, not being the enemy." Noted Shahin, jokingly Corman hoped.

AN: I realize this description makes out the Cylon fleet as a more formidable opponent then they were in cannon. But you see in the TV-series the combat strength of a ship depends mostly on drama (as can be seen when in Daybreak the Galactica survives a much harder beating then it took to take the Pegasus down despite the Galactica in the previous episode being in such a poor state it was nearly falling apart all by itself), thus now the Colonials have the numerical advantage the Cylons become a lot more competent thanks to the 'inverse ninja law'.

Also does anybody have any feedback how I'm doing?


	6. Arrestations

**Chapter 6 : Arrestations**

**A computer terminal at the Battlestar Pegasus**

**The same night (if the concept of night and day can be said to exist in space)**

Gina Invierre one of the Battlestar's system analysts, was standing in front of her computer terminal. Admiral Cain did not really like chairs, probably because of her Tauron origin. There they believed that 'real men' (a term which apparently included Cain) either stand or sit on the ground.

She had nearly finished her current assignment, some test-runs to check if there were software incompatibilities. When suddenly she felt something in her head. A message was sent on the Cylon wireless.

It was of low quality, it must have been aimed at somewhere far away. But she could make a few things out of it: the message was meant for a liaison agent who was supposed to relay it back home. It was send by Cylon 5-0D-134-2D and mentioned the newest CNP upgrade, just installed on his cruiser, the Hiems. (Who names a ship after the season winter?)

Six looked around her, to see if someone was watching, apparently not.

Out of curiosity she took a peek at the MoD's update server's maybe the CNP's update log contained a clue as to what was going on.

But apparently not, all Gina could see where a few things about a more 'intuitive' Graphical User Interface. When she scrolled down into the section on bugfixes her heart skipped a beat. It contained one entry, a fix for a total CNP-crash caused by a very specific map-update formatting error. The entry ended on a sarcastic remark about how even 'geniuses' like Gaius Baltar should keep themselves to coding conventions when writing exception-handling modules, then they would at least notice the sloppiness in their work.

The first and most important domino of their electronical sabotage was down, the attack they had already been preparing for for decades must be delayed once again.

Somewhere Gina actually felt relief, now there was no risk she needed to kill Cain. She immediately reprimanded herself. She was sent here to kill humans, not frack them.

She closed the CNP update log and continued with her supposed work. But she failed to concentrate on it, her mind kept going back to the anticlimactic end of her twin's years of work, crowned with her access to the defence mainframe. It ended not in the hoped breakthrough, bringing a total victory. It was not even a spectacular backfire which doomed the infiltration. But it ended in a whimper, the backdoor got patched over like a mere bug, allowing the colonies and the infiltration to go on as if nothing happened, as if her sister never even existed.

* * *

**In a police van driving at high speed through Caprica City**

**At the same moment**

Arcier Matraq had already seen many strange during his service in the special brigade: he had once served several weeks as a bodyguard for some trillionaire's cat, after it had become clear a gang was trying to kidnap the beast for ransom. He had already earlier done missions under the direct command of the director of the CDIA, like that time when misogynist terrorist where holding some feminist VIP's hostage. (They were very beautiful but poorly enough already married.)

But if someone had told him what he'd do know he'd have said he was bonkers. If it hadn't the CDIA director and a quarter of the admiralty behind it he'd be sure it was a joke.

Apparently next to him were the Director, Beatrix, and a human-looking something grown by the toasters in a petri dish. The latter also had an ego as big as that of President Adar. Currently they were discussing the Cylon 'model lines' with the 'turncoat', or that's what he was told she is, describing the third of them. She was speaking so fast he could only half understand her.

"…As you can clearly see my production line is certainly better designed then those Ones and Twos. I think it has partly something to do with the 'Original Programmers' being less experienced when they made them, but that's unlikely to be the main reason. As the Fives and Eights are just as badly designed and said explanation does not work for them. Anyway we also are the most curious of the models, whilst that has led some Threes 'back home' into trouble by poking their noses into taboo subjects, I can proudly state it made us one of the cleverer models, by giving us the widest knowledge base. Beyond that I can also assure you the Threes also belong to the more mature lines, and that the rest of my model only voted for the destruction of humanity thanks to the bad influence of the Ones and Twos. And that if the Threes were the most senior and influential of the Cylons none of this genocide nonsense would be-"

"Interesting and all," Beatrix interrupted her. "But could you please stick to the strategically relevant."

"Ah, sorry for digressing, but you see I got carried away as-. Oh, right. Well on to the Fours, so now first, their modus operandi when infiltrating as some medical professional begins with…"

**15 minutes later in the same police van, this time it was standing still.**

In a building nearby, the two 'Frankenbabes', the one of them who (hopefully) is a defector wearing a bug, were meeting in a room on the second floor. (Or was it the third? On Acier's home planet of Leonis the continents could never agree on whether or not to count the ground floor as the first floor, leaving him still thoroughly confused even on Caprica which had no such problems.)

He was listening anxiously to his receiver encase he heard the 'defector' use a distress code or something else which indicates they should intervene.

"Is that a bandage under your sleeve? Are you wounded?" He heard the Six's voice over the radio.

"Oh, nothing important, my husband accidently cut me during cooking." The Three replied.

"Oh!" She responded emphatically. "The unhandy human! Though I should not denigrate him, considering what will happen to him next."

"One of the last of his kind. How hard will he hate me?" The melancholy sounded through clearly in the defector's voice.

"Well, you knew this could happen when you married him."

"Completely true, but if that is the pain I must bear for the honour of being the mother for the first of God's new generation, I shall bear it with the utmost pride."

Back in the van Matraq turned towards the director. "What the hells, are they talking about?"

"No idea," she replied. "when I wondered why three of those things had started families here she simply replied it was of no strategical significance."

"Did you already received the grave news?" Three responded to something they had not heard back in the van because they were too busy talking with each other.

"Ah, yes, the CNP backdoor was patched out." Six sounded conflicted. "Now what about the plan?"

"I don't know more then you. I think they'll wait till they find another ace in the hole. But they might just as well think the dangers of an attack without such an advantage, are smaller than the risk towards the Cylon Network caused by an infiltrator doing something stupid and being found out. The latter would end catastrophic."

"Yes, I understand the pacifists even less than the butchers. Don't they see that unrestrained humanity is a deadly threat. One may pity wolves, because God had made them such wretched animals, but one still shoots them, as otherwise they will eat you and your family. Poorly enough they 'back home' haven't realised that they also can solve that problem by 'domesticating' the predators under the might of arms."

"I too badly fear those wolves eating us all, my Alice." Three replied.

"So, are you really sure 'that thing' is not a fake defector? She doesn't seem very sympathic towards humans to me." Acier asked.

"She has already proven to be capable of perfectly faking her emotions, in the tests I put her under to see whether she was telling the truth in being inhuman." The Director replied.

After noticing he didn't looked relieved, she added. "Also keep in mind that it does not strategical sense for the Cylons to sacrifice their infiltrations greatest advantage, our ignorance of it, for the dubious and short-lived advantage of a mere double agent."

"…The rational part in me knows that, considering our opponents, we would win anyway. But to the 'human' in me are to abstract. Parhaps I could have a better night rest if they were more concrete." Three continued something they missed. Luckily everything was recorded.

Then Six took the bait.

She started talking about electronical sabotage with the enthusiasm of a sports fan bragging about the victories of his favourite pyramid team.

Various forms of malware passed the revue: computer viruses that have the ability to learn, worms that can turn programs into trojan horses, trojan horses that spread worms, logic bombs in ship mainframes and real bombs in planetside computer mainframes.

"And should the Colonies somehow survive long enough to go on the offensive, they won't manage to catch us anyway thanks to our superior navigation." Three threw in.

"Ooh, yes, it recently has been improved even more, I heard: now a raider can go from here to Kobol in a single jump." Six replied.

"Ah, we already broke the 2000 lightyear barriers?"

Acier had thought nothing could surprise him anymore, he was wrong. Not only did Kobol exist, it was found by the Cylons, who can jump so far he'd bet they must have broken at least one law of physics.

Then their conversation shifted into sports, with Six lamenting she would now never know who would win this year's Colonial Pyramid Cup. Though Cassandra quickly ended it by claiming she had to pick up her kids from a playdate.

"Sir, we have a problem, somebody with a face like this is approaching!" The agent who was running into the van held a paper with the face of a Five on it.

* * *

Jonathan Owens was underway to 6-12D-90-28. He heard it on the grapevine that 3-156-B7-20 was paying her a visit. After Cassandra was gone he'd ask Alice whether she noticed anything suspicious about her. Not that he expected to find anything, if the Three had any hidden plans she wouldn't involve her with it, not even indirectly.

But his boss would still complain if he did not investigate every single angle no matter how farfetched.

During his walk he passed some litter lying on the street. He shook his head. He could not make head or tail of why human civilization had not collapsed out of itself yet. If they can't even make a small effort for something that effects their own neighbourhood, how do they succeed in making a huge effort for something that effects a different planet? Or maybe he misunderstood and people only litter in neighbouring quarters inhabited by some or other hated 'other'?

Two men started approaching him, they were probably police officers undercover as civilians, betrayed by the trained, nervous, systematic way they scanned their surroundings for onlookers and their hasteful yet cautious movements.

Not that he had any worries if they needed him it would be as witness or because they confused him with someone else. There was not a single reason they had to come after him.

"Sir, can I have your name please?" One of them said to him, the other hiding behind his back.

"Jonathan Owens." The Five said. "I think you must be confusing me with someone else."

Then the officer directly in front of him suddenly moved away, revealing the other one aiming a teaser at him.

The agent shot, however the Cylon's reflexes were faster.

It barely missed him.

He quickly grabbed the agent in front of him and lifted him often the ground.

Then he turned him towards the other as a living shield.

The captured officer started trying to stamp him with his knees, but again the Cylon's reflexes were faster.

Five moved his head behind the first agent's neck to peek at the other one.

He again fired his teaser.

It was an impressively accurate shot, but Jonathan had anticipated that.

He had already begun moving the captured agent in the way before other policeman shot.

The Cylon dropped the electrocuted officer and jumped at the remaining opponent.

He fell on the ground.

Lying on top of him, Jonathan could smell the agent had just peed in his pants.

"Ever tried asking questions first and only shoot later?" Five exclaimed.

Suddenly he heard the sound of rolling tires.

Two police vans appeared one on each end of the round.

Five quickly made some calculations. He could have tried entering a house by jumping through a window, but they chose the spot to well, the closest windows had metal grids in front of them and he'd be shot by a teaser before reaching one of the further windows. There also were no lampposts to climb.

In the end he simply surrendered by raising his arms. He would simply tell them he thought he was being mugged. In the worst case he'd be jailed for something he hadn't done, not that it mattered as it would be only for three months anyway.

As the police started coming closer to him, he noticed something amiss with the way they looked at him, as if he were some sort of super-dangerous animal instead of an unarmed criminal. They must have confused him with a serial killer, Five assumed.

"May I ask for what I'm being arrested?" Jonathan asked.

Their sergeant ignored him instead turned towards his men. "Take no risks."

Five was hit by multiple teasers in both his front and back.

Then everything went black.

* * *

When Jonathan Owens woke up he had a huge headache, he immediately tried to mute it by focusing his mind on other parts of his body.

He noticed he was handcuffed, bound and gagged. He most likely was located inside a police van.

"You traitor! Malfunctioning apostate!" He heard Six screaming outside, just what was going on?

"Ah, to the contrary!" He heard Three reply. "I'm functioning perfectly. It are those back home who have gone astray. Attributing to God's will their own delusional goals, lowering themselves to the level of their enemies."

Now Five had the vague feeling he might have been wrong assuming 3-156-B7-20 would never betray the Great Network. He disliked the mere possibility of it immensely.

"Maybe you're right. But this is even worse! Those undesigned savages will simply kill us all! You idiot!" Six shouted.

"That looks improbable to me." The traitor coldly replied.

"What? Are you mad? Just look at what they have done to each other! I don't even want to know what fate they might unleash on us, especially now they know what the others had planned for them."

"Hey! It isn't like our whole history exists out of trying to kill each other!" One of the officers angerly retorted.

"Correct, human history also contains plenty of examples of the contrary. Whilst hate is a strong emotion in humanity, there is one which is stronger than it." Three said.

"Don't tell me it's compassion or pity. For that they need to see us as persons." Six retorted.

"Of course not! Who do you think I am? A naïve Eight? How many wars did that stop? I'm talking about greed!"

"Wait? Greed?!" The same officer wondered.

"Yes, of course, when the Cylon Network underwent a near-total mobilization of everything towards the construction of a new military-industrial-technological complex, what happened in the Colonies? A gigantic rise of government debt whilst the people threw massive tax-protests. As huge corporations expand their tax evasion schemes the infrastructure of whole subcontinents is crumbling by lack of repair. Whilst millions die from curable diseases and preventable accidents the rich live in luxury and opulence, well expect in Picon or Virgon of course."

"Hells, now you sound like a Solidarity Platform militant." A policewoman sighed. "I hadn't expected that from a Cylon defector."

"The Solidarity Platform!? Me?!" Jonathan had never before heard Cassandra so insulted. "I wish to have nothing to do with these idiots. They oppose vaccinations and genetical modified organisms, plus have you seen their econom-"

"You're a fracking GMO yourself!" The policewoman shouted.

"Yes, and I'm proud of it too!" Out of this reply Five concluded Cassandra did not went completely mad, not like that made things any better.

Another cop simply laughed, he must have had a peculiar sense of humour.

"Well anyway my dear sister," Three spoke. "I hope you now see why the Colonies would be open to negotiate a conditional surrender. Especially as they would find the alternative would be a decades long guerrilla war against a nomadic opponent, a fight wherein at every jump the chased enemy might turn around to assault their pursuers or their supply lines or their homes… Clearly their xenophobia and lust for vengeance would not suffice to prevent them going for the option which allows them to repurpose the intact Great Network's industrial and technological capabilities for their own ends."

"You're delusional!" Six retorted. "When they're finished squeezing our nation empty like a lemon they'll simply discard us like thrash! Then they'll kill you when they no longer need you. Then your children and husband. Then your in-"

"Look around yourself, you're supposed to be able to sense human emotions. Now do you notice sufficient anger towards me for them to do that? No, thus that belief is not borne out of observation. This prejudice was put in you back at home. Take my hand and I'll prove it."

"No way! Stay out of my mind! Heretical glitch!"

"If you do not listen to me, this conversation is over."

"Take her away!" A man shouted, Five assumed it was the superintendent.

"It's not too late to repent Cassy." Six made a last desperate attempt. "If you act now you can still save us all." It was ignored.

Then he only heard footsteps, mutter and car doors opening and closing.

Two pairs of footsteps entered the van at the front.

One of them started the engine. "If that's how the abominations who voted against killing us all think about us, I wonder how the rest of them must think about us."

"Well I don't, I'm more interested in how to shoot the toasters." After a short pause he spoke again. "Though, you think she was right in that last idea of hers?"

"Well, wars are expensive. And after them people might feel too exhausted to pay heavy taxes to buy back war debt."

"Ah, hadn't thought about that. Now any idea how many of those Cylons we can demolish without it hampering any tribute we could extract from them?"

That was the only relief Five felt that day, for apparently Cassandra was correct that human greed would enable at least some Cylons to survive encase plan B and Plan C went awry. But plan B, a conventional war, would likely still work ofcourse: those senile gerontocrats in the Colonial Navy would probably find plenty of ways to shoot themselves in the foot, enabling the Cylon Network to gain the upperhand. Plan C, running away, in contrast depended mostly on Cassandra, if she went sufficiently traitor to help the Colonials reverse-engineer Cylon navigation technology, the enemy would have the capability to keep on persueing them no matter where they go.


	7. Just before the hurricane

**Chapter 7 : The silence before the storm**

**In one of the many spacious hallways of the Battlestar Galactica**

**The 94th day before Armistice Day, just after midnight**

"But, this must be a mistake!" The handcuffed and footcuffed Boomer protested. "How could I have any connection with a fracking monotheist terrorist group? I was born on Troy!"

"Maybe, it is a mistake." Said the sergeant of the full marine squad which was escorting her towards the brig. "Or even probably mayhaps. But I gathered the Admiralty does not want to take any needless risks."

Boomer sighed. "So how long do I need to sit in jail? Till they found the person who really was on those pictures? Who is she supposed to be anyway?"

"From what I gathered her comrades referred to her as Eight." Sounded in front of them.

"Ah, Bill, err, I mean, commander, sir." Boomer's face brightened up. "Can you solve this mess? I'm apparently confused with some terrorist who infiltrated the fleet. Surely, you must know what for nonsense that is."

"I'm aware." Adama replied. "I even was the one who ordered the marines to arrest you. Not lightly of course, when I first read the orders from the admiralty I and Saul at first thought it had to be a joke. But then I noticed it was signed by among others both admiral Corman and admiral Shahin. They simply have a too large personal dislike for each other to cooperate for something as banal as a hoax. I tried to open a private channel with both of them. As they already were in a call, I could only listen in on them talking to other admirals. But, yes, they verified the message."

"So, I'm really suspected?" Boomer's face immediately grew gloomy again.

The commander only nodded. His eyes were filled with doubt, even he suspected her.

Lieutenant Gaeta walked in on them. "Sir, something clearly wrong is going on."

"What is that, Felix?" Adama asked.

"So, sir, I was listening to the wireless, like you asked me, and already nearly half the Battlestar groups claim to have caught a suspect or two. This can't be right, they got the same pictures as ours. I know those seven are sure to have a few lookalikes hanging around on such a big fleet, but over half a dozen each, that is simply too much. Or so I think."

"Yea." The marine sergeant threw in. "That time they were looking for umpteen Saggitaran separatists only around a forty BSGs ended up containing unlucky doppelgangers of them. And that was after the manhunt was over."

"Oh gods." The commander cursed. "It is fracking true, I was still hoping it was a hoax. But there really are duplicates of those seven running around."

"Duplicates, sir? You mean twins?" Gaeta asked. "Wait, no, that still leaves too few of them to explain the difference."

"So, you mean I'm suspected of being a clone?!" Boomer did not look amused.

"Well, actually Nagala used the term 'cyborg clone things', but wait I'll show you his message, otherwise you mightn't believe it. I left it in the bridge."

Then they heard some gunshots from afar.

"What was that?"

"Who is shooting?"

The marine sergeant took up his radio, then he talked in it for a while.

He turned to the other. "It was Doral, he's dead. He suddenly lunged at the marines trying to arrest him. He managed to kill one of them before being shot down."

"Hells!" The commander shouted. "This is all my fault, I should have warned them."

"But you did warn us, sir." The marine sergeant replied. "You clearly said we should assume they were very dangerous and aware that we would be coming."

"Yes, but I, fracking, thought I had not the time for explaining they also might have superhuman strength." Adama's face looked like he was experiencing physical pain.

"Superhuman strength?" Boomer wondered. "What in Tartaros name is going on?"

She once again attracted the admiral's attention. "Keep her chained to a chair and under constant supervision. I don't want any other nasty surprises."

* * *

**A Resurrection ship a 'mere' 100 lightyears away from the Armistice Line, the downloading facilities for the Sixes**

Nathalie Faust found herself awakening in one of the facilities many rebirthing tanks.

She looked around herself, confused. "What happened? Did I fall asleep in bath?"

A fellow Six was leaning on the side of her tub. "I'm afraid we have a problem, sister."

Then Nathalie's memories came flooding back in. "Tell me something. First I hear on the Cylon wireless from some agent on Caprica that he barely escaped from the special brigade. And then marines, not police, but fracking marines, turned up at my doorstep in Gemenon. I failed in taking a single of those bastards down with me."

"You ain't the only one." Her twin replied. "Multiple models from multiple planets are either also busy with downloading or have messaged they are being hunted."

Nathalie cursed in old Gemenese. "So, we're found out?"

"I fear so." She handed her over some clothes. "Better get dressed. They are expecting you in the command room."

One Cylon of each model was standing in the centre of the command room, they had just finished the orders to prepare for the invasion. On the edges of the room some Cylons still wet from their 'baths' were being interrogated.

The Cylons in the middle were frantically discussing what was happening.

"Just in," Said the Five, whilst connecting with the datastream. "They've apparently also arrested an Eight, Artemis Sommet, that makes all Significant Seven models."

"A post pick is about to return to his nest." The hybrid blabbed in the background.

"By Kronos" Exclaimed the Four. "We must be betrayed!"

"Impossible!" Three retorted. "No Cylon would ever do such a thing."

Meanwhile the Hybrid uttered: "A child has joined up with her grandparents."

"Maybe a sleeperagent ended up defective." Proposed Two. "They don't realize they shouldn't get too attached to the enemy, plus there was a reason their positions were given over to sleeperagents. So if one of them found out wh-"

"Incoming rapport from one of our stealth raiders." The Six cut him off, her eyes not even raising themselves from the datastream.

The Cylons had always positioned some stealth raiders near the armistice line, though those were all of them as the expensive stealth raider did not mesh well with the Cylon doctrine of expandability.

They served as both border guards and listening posts, the latter coming in handy if you have somebody on the inside giving you the enemy's communication codes.

"The raiders are being armed. I'm feeding the guard dogs." The hybrid sang, whilst the rest were downloading the data.

"I fear our brother Four is correct." The One lamented after having gone through the rapport.

"Yes, indeed, they know simply too much." The Eight added. "What they already know ranges from our model numbers towards our Cylon abilities, not even our different models infiltration strategies are unknown to them."

Three started grasping for straws. "Maybe they first spend weeks spying on our spies before going over to action."

But the rest simply ignored her, as the hybrid kept babbling on. "Two armies are drawing their bows. Which one will shoot first?"

"I believe it was an Eight" Five said.

"What?" Eight yelled.

Five continued. "They are too empathic, in itself not bad, but in combination with their impulsiveness and naivety…"

"I always said we should have only used them as sleeperagents." Four added.

Ignoring this conversation the Hybrid said. "The list of targets is being narrowed down."

"Personally, I find it more likely it was one of the mothers." One theorized. "They are simply too close to the enemy."

"Those two options need not be mutually exclusive." Two noted.

"Sorry, brother." Six responded. "We'd know if it was her. The Eight with children is kept under a too tight scrutiny."

"Coordinating the battleplans. Make war not love." The Hybrid uttered.

"It could have been a Three." Eight said. "You know how they are always poking their noses in things Cylon is not meant to know, like the Final Five or the Original Programmers. You know what? One of them might have committed an even greater violation of common sense and decided to investigate the 'goodness of humanity'."

Three felt insulted. "One of my model line a traitor? What have you been downloading?"

Six tried to soothe them. "Siblings, let us stop levelling unfounded accusations at each other, but instead look at the facts."

"The Turner has turned. It's the perfect tautology." The Hybrid went on.

"Well our agents on Caprica and those related with the anti-genocide faction, appear to be overrepresented in the part of our spies who are found out." One stated.

"Thus, the defector is likely someone on Caprica involved with the 'human-lovers'?" Four suggested.

"It's Artemis Sommet, she's only pretending to be arrested." Five deduced. "She is responsible to check for disloyalties, this both means she needs to know all of the 'softies' and there is nobody who is checking whether her own loyalty is wavering. Plus in all her spying on them she comes in close contact with their dissident ideas, close enough to get infected by them."

"Interesting theory, but no." Three responded. "We had incalculated that possibility. Artemis Sommet is herself being kept under a to close watch by her subordinates."

"Wait, one of those 'mothers'" One pronounced the word with disgust. "was on Caprica. It might have been her."

"It's Cassandra you're talking about." Eight replied. "If she was the traitor she'd have betrayed us long ago. Her estimated sympathy for the enemy peaked like a decade ago, plus she's smart enough to know hesitation will get her nowhere."

"The missile batteries of the surrounding Basestars are prepared. Our crossbows are drawn." The Hybrid said.

Then an incoming message came through the datastream, this time from the Cylon Colony, the attack had been officially sped up.

"Why did it take so long?" Six wondered.

"Apparently the Two's first wanted to consult the Hybrids." Said Three.

"Typically!" One spat out, he never understood what the second model line saw in the Hybrids' nonsense.

"The Palace and the Hexagon. She reversed her polarity in the hearth of the beast." The hybrid uttered.

"Well, we are to prepare as fast as Cylonically possible to hit the enemy with our full strength." Five said, apparently he forgot the others could also read that text document.

"We already sent out the orders." Two noted.

"If the attack is delayed, at least it won't be our fault." Four said.

* * *

Cassandra found herself in a dimly lit courthouse, most of it was made out of white marble thus the inside would have been very bright if it was not so dark and dirty at the moment. Rain and lightning could be seen through the windows.

The accusation had finished its case and the accused had failed in their attempts to defend themselves.

"Please do not judge them too harshly." She said whilst looking at her seven siblings chained to their chairs. "Haven't we all done rash and foolish things in our youth?"

"Silence!" Judge Adar hit his dark wooden desk with his hammer. "You have already been given sufficient opportunity to defend them."

Then he turned towards the jury, seated in leather chairs. "You have been given ample time to deliberate. So, dear ladies and gentlemen, what is your verdict?"

"Guilty!" Parresse spat out, his voice filled with disgust.

"Guiltier then guilty!" Said Corman, salivating at the prospect of revenge. "Give them a punishment worse than legally allowed."

"Guilty!" Yelled Funar, her eyes filled with hate. "They shall not get away with their attempted misdeeds against us."

"Guilty!" Tammuz shouted.

"I can only say, I concur with the rest of the jury." Eric mentioned.

"Guilty!" Exclaimed Mrs Emperor. "Give them the maximum sentence, execution."

"Well, I presume their conviction is already certain." Nagala said. "But, I still declare them guilty!"

"A verdict has been reached, hasn't it?" Judge Adar said.

"Please, dear sirs," Uttered Cassandra. "this is an opportunity to end this cycle of hate. If only to make the defeated useful to the victors."

"Meh," He replied. "Didn't you said I was stupid and short-sighed? Then don't be surprised I won't grab this opportunity."

"But what about that smug feeling of moral superiority that one gets from treating a defeated opponent better than they would have treated you?"

"Pff, that would be hypocritical. I'd rather be literally Warner Walker then a hypocrite." Then a small part of Cassandra noticed something was completely wrong: the real Adar would never say such a thing because of the effect it would have on his approval ratings.

"But, you already are a hypocrite, like most politicians."

"Silence!" Adar once again hammered on his desk. "You have already received too many opportunities to defend these abominations."

Then he once again turned away from her. "I sentence these monstrosities against nature to the firing squad!" He slammed the desk so hard with his hammer the desk completely fell apart. "Ouch! A table-leg fell on my feet!"

Then Six turned her head, she already stood blindfolded at the wall. "But, sir, I voted against the attack, this is so unfair. I even told them to-"

"And yet you did nothing, you even were their willing accomplice." Adar said.

"Ready?"

The soldiers, who suddenly appeared out of nowhere, took their guns.

"Aim."

The gun barrels were lowered.

"And fire!"

Then the guns went off.

* * *

"AAAHHH, mother!" Cassandra yelled, she nearly jumped out of her bed. Her fierce movements had made the linen nearly fall off the matrass.

"What was that? You okay?" Came from the other side of the door.

"Yes, well physically at least, it was only a nightmare, yet thanks, anyway." She replied whilst smoothening her bed.

"Oh, a nightmare, so that is something you cannot turn off." The guard, Hamilcar, came in to check on her.

"Well, not directly, I can turn off my need for sleep. But that has severe side effects, comparable to what humans get from sleep deprivation. Though that did not stop the Ones from doing it."

"Why?"

Cassandra was ready with her bed and now stood up. "They claim they did it to avoid losing time, but from an efficiency standpoint that makes no sense. It is not worth the negative influence on the quality of their work hours. Thus I believe it was narcism, they disliked having something in common with the humans they so despise. However if you ask me, sacrificing such things as concentration, health, good memory, quick reaction times and mental stability for such petty reasons proves they are very human indeed. Oh, the irony."

"Ah, I see." Said the Hamilcar, unsure of whether or not to take that as an insult.

"But now about something other. Did you hear anything new about my husband?"

"No, as far as I know, he's still staring apathetically in front of himself in Nagala's room, with a hangover, complaining against everyone he meets."

She sighed. "Ah, thank you anyway, I thought some time alone could help him cope with the shock. Apparently I hadn't understood him as well as I hoped. Let's see whether I can reverse that policy."

He simply stared at her, he had no wish to be involved with some 'half-toaster's' family life.

Then her eyes suddenly widened. "Dang, I'm nearly found out."

"What?"

"The Cylon wireless, I was reviewing the messages I received in my sleep. They had deduced they were betrayed and already have gathered quite a lot of clues. Though that was to be expected."

* * *

**Some news headlines on the website of the Interplanetary Herald:**

2 : 12 : The navy cancels all leave and calls up the reserves, another Cylon War Scare?

2 : 57 : Mass arrestations are taking place on all colonies, the CDIA claims to be rooting out a widespread terrorist group.

3 : 27 : Massive naval manoeuvres. Lots of Battlestars have taken up positions around the colonies, they claim their posture is merely meant as a defence against a Cylon attack.

3 : 54 : Arrestations have also taken place in the navy.

4 : 09 : The President has been 'escorted' to a secure location, just what is going?

4 : 24 : New info on the suspected 'terrorists', they seem to be mostly unrelated. Containing people from government-critical journalists to high ranking business men and rather average folk.

4 : 44 : The internet is exploding with rumours about a military coup.

4 : 56 : Gaius Baltar is also arrested. He is accused of giving his mistress access to the Defence Mainframes.

5 : 02 : Just why have all those arrests and the military mobilizations all begun around the same time.

5 : 23 : Long live the admiralty! President Adar was a spineless weakling! He would have bowed to the pacifists who seek to disarm the Colonies leaving us defenceless against the Cylons.

5 : 39 : An analysis of the likely leaders of a purely hypothetical military junta.

5 : 47 : Adar has announced he will give a press conference via telescreen on an undisclosed location.

5 : 55 : Already 'poorly defended' mayor cities are being evacuated.

6 : 02 : The Quorum Delegate Hasdrubal refutes the claims about a military coup. "But the reality is worse than that!" He says. "The Cylons are really coming!"

6 : 07 : Invitations have been send for a join civilian-military press conference, it will take place this midday, Caprica City Time.

6 : 12 : One of our writers offers his excuses, he claims he only made that controversial article in the belief the navy had committed a successful coup and he wanted to avoid being purged.

6 : 21 : Newest info on the arrested terrorists, a lot of them apparently look like eachother. Where there only seven terrorists but did the CDIA accidently also arrested their doppelgangers?


	8. Armageddon Arrives part 1

**Chapter 8 : Armageddon Arrives 1/2**

**AN:**

A small retcon, I doubled the number of Raiders per Basestar to 868. The previous number was based on the amount of Raider launch ports a Basestar had. However in a conversation with Just a Crazy-Man, he brought up the possibility that there might be multiple Raiders per launch port.

So thanks Just a Crazy-Man, I guess.

**Ragnarok anchorage**

**The 94****th****day before Armistice Day : 11:24**

In the hallways of the massive station the deckhands and other personnel were busy carrying boxes and pushing trollies.

Chief Galen Tyrol was overseeing the work and carefully making notes on what had already been loaded onboard the Galactica. He was actually glad that this absorbed all his attention. It prevented his mind from wandering to unpleasant things, like Cylons throwing nukes at them or the possibility that Boomer might turn out to be a Cylon.

_Oh, Sharon,_ he thought. He wished he could say he was sure that she was human, in fact a part of him was sure that she could not be a Cylon. But then he'd be kidding himself: he heard one of these 'things' _(they really need to find a term with to refer to the non-metal toasters)_ was married for years and appeared as a loving father to its stepdaughter. How could one have any certainty after learning they are THAT good at fooling people.

Then he noticed a trolley, being pushed by D. Socinus and Diana Seelix, was heading towards somewhere it was not supposed to go.

"Hey!" Tyrol shouted. "What are you doing?"

"Getting the rest of the nukes." Socinus reported.

"No, you aren't. Our orders are to leave spares behind encase another ship needs to restock here. That includes nukes."

"Oh! Couldn't someone have said that earlier?" Seelix grumbled.

"Look, it is not my fault that we are terribly organized." The Chief ended the conversation, and it was true: the Galactica being nearly decommissioned had led to a lot of complacency and negligence in her crew.

Then Galen accidently went back to his previous thoughts. From what he heard the higherups are convinced that some of those 'meaty toasters' are themselves unaware of what they are, believing themselves to be humans till they are activated to turn on the friends they had made.

So maybe, it was possible that his love was one of them, yet still truly loved him. He had not the faintest idea how he would react should that turn out to be the case. Though he had the vague idea it would not have a happy ending, like in those books about star-crossed lovers his late mother used to read.

He sighed. _I shouldn't have violated those regulations against starting a romantic relationship with a superior. This uncertainty might well be worse than being sure I was deceived._

However he was snapped out of his thoughts by a loud beeping sound.

"Prepare for leaving!" The voice of Communications Officer Dualla came through his radio. "Finish your current tasks and return to ship! Hurry up! Cylon scouts have already showed! I repeat, prepare for leaving!"

And thus the Galactica began to prepare for its first fight in round two between man and machine. Tyrol hoped it won't be her last fight. _I hope the other crews won't laugh at us for serving into a Battlestar whereof one half was in the proces of being turned into a museum._

**The defensive perimeter around the Scorpion Shipyards, Battlestar Pegasus, The CIC.**

**11 : 39**

The Pegasus presence near Scorpia was the product of pure coincidence, they were heading to the shipyards for a retrofit when the news about the Cylon infiltration came in. The Battlestar quickly found itself ordered into the defensive positions around the shipyards by the newly arrived admiral Corman. He technically wasn't Cain's direct superior but she knew it was not the time to be overly rigid.

"Noticed anything new, since those craft disappeared?" Asked Rear-Admiral Cain.

"No, sir, it has already been five minutes since the last has disappeared." Her CO Hoshi answered.

Cain had been using this time to consider the truthfulness of the new intel about the Cylons. Officially it came from a 'likely unreliable' source, but in typical admiralty style they revealed nothing about the source itself.

Yet till now the source had proven itself accurate, the DRADIS signature of the scouts matched the small size and weird shape it accorded to the 'new' Raiders. The intel also was correct on at least some of them having FTL-drives.

But, the admiralty also asked to check whether those new Cylon craft can bleed. Which would not even make sense should the source consist out of Cylon disinformation.

In the brig below sat Gina Invierre. Cain herself was completely sure she was an innocent human who only had the poor luck of looking like a Cylon model, she knew her too well to not notice if she was something else. But Cain knew the admiralty wanted complete certainty, and would not tolerate 'risk taking' even should she later turned out to be right.

Around a thousand kilometres around the Scorpia Shipyards was a perimeter of defence satellites armed with various weapons and extra sensors to help the defending ships. They also emitted an artificial gravity field in constant flux. The constantly changing gravity made FTL very inaccurate and dangerous, preventing the Cylons from simply jumping nuclear armed craft right on top of them. One of this satellite perimeter's operators had turned out to be one of those 'fake humans' created by the Cylons. It was obvious what his mission had been.

"Give me the intercom." She asked Hoshi. "I think my men are in need of some pep talk."

After she was given the microphone she coughed to get everyone's attention.

"The enemy is coming, soon they will jump in. Some of you might be wondering for what we are fighting. Is it glory, no. Is it vengeance, no. Groupies, no. Money, no. Not even honour. We are fighting for survival. Not out own survival offcourse but that of our families! Our homes! For the Cylon has already made its goals known: the total extermination of our Civilization! They seek to destroy humanity and with it all that is good. For what use is the rising of the sun, the blossoming of the flower, the wingbeat of the butterfly if there is no one left to witness it?"

Cain paused for dramatic effect before continuing. "This can only happen over our dead bodies, even if we all are cowards who run away. Thus let us not be cowardly but brave! We shall take it up as our duty to die so that our families may life! When you pray to the gods do not ask them that the Pegasus will survive to see the end of this war, but ask them that should our ship go down the reward for our sacrifice will be that our homes survive."

"In the wars of ancient times when the stakes were high the survival of the nation was the paramount imperative. As then, so now, poorly enough. We shall wage war from out cockpits, from our turrets, from the CIC and in our hallways should we be boarded! The path to victory can be found in our bulkheads, in our guns and in our planes. And in ourselves."

Helena stopped to take a deep breath. "In order to win here, to successfully defend the most important military shipyard of the Colonies, we must cast away our humanity and become shields. We must replace our self-preservation with determination. We must replace our fear with anger. Do this and, I promise you, not a single Cylon will get past us! We must become shields so that after our victory over the soulless machines we can become human again."

One last pause for dramatic effect. "And should we, which I for not a single second consider possible, fail in our defence of the Colonies, we still have one recourse left: Revenge! Payback!"

"So say we all!" The crowd roared.

"So say we all!" Everyone kept on shouting.

"So say we all!" Even the unenthusiastic continued, they did not want to hurt the morale of the others.

"So say we all!" The yelling started to slowly die down.

Cain was pleasantly surprised, she had feared it might not have been good enough.

"New DRADIS contacts, sir" Lieutenant Hoshi shouted.

"Action stations, action stations! Set condition one throughout the ship! This is not a drill! Prepare the Vipers and missile tubes!" Her XO Jurgen Belzen announced over the intercom.

Cain looked at the DRADIS screens. Craft jumped in both in front of them and behind them, both starboard and larboard, both above and below them.

"How many? How far?" She asked.

"Around an eighty capital ships and over a hundred smaller ships. They jumped in around a ten thousand kilometres around the shipyard, sir." Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Fisk described. At such distances an erratically moving target was relatively safe from even a Battlestars largest cannons.

_So they outnumber us three to one in capitals and have parity in escorts, I hope reinforcements arrive soon. _Cain thought.

"Oh, just in, another two dozen ships have appeared around Scorpia."

_Unsurprising, they want to distract the Scorpian Planetary Defence Force so they won't help us. Not that I can fault Admiral Dido for placing the survival of her own planet first, it's her job after all._

"Launch all our planes! Even the reserve!" The rear-admiral commanded. Should they lose all their vipers they could borrow some from fleets which had not seen combat anyway.

"But, they'll be outnumbered over 8-to-1, if the source is correct. That's-" Colonel Belzen protested.

"Just do it!"

For a short moment Jurgen looked as if he would continue to argue, then he saw on the DRADIS the other Battlestars had already begun to launch their own planes. "Launch the Vipers and Raptors!" He shouted through his microphone, then he muttered. "No use in letting the others be outnumbered even worse anyway."

_Did that idiot really think in the middle of a battle is a moment to argue about orders? _Cain wondered. _I'll berate him for this when the battle is over. If he pulls this again I'll have him replaced with less insubordinate officer._

It did not take long for the CIC to be filled with the chatter of a seventh of the Colonial fleet desperately trying to coordinate thousands of Vipers in an effective defence line.

Suddenly the Cylons glowed up green on the DRADIS. They had transmitted Colonial signals.

"Oh, gods! The CNP is down!" The helmsman shouted.

_Luckely we, despite the backdoor being 'fixed' still disconnected the CNP from the network._

"The Vipers!" Belzen screamed. They were Mark VII's, thanks to their overreliance on networking they were nearly unflyable without the CNP. The risk of the Cylons still managing to compromise their systems was deemed less bad than a severely reduced combat effectiveness.

"Our Vipers appear to be fine, they haven't even noticed a thing." Hoshi said. "It's apparently only us, I have heard nothing from the other ships."

"Cylon infiltrator." Belzen deduced.

"GINNAA!" Cain screamed, she would pay for this. Cain thought she could have trusted her.

"What are the Cylons doing?" Fisk inquired.

"Hard to say thanks to the quality of their ECM, but it looks like swarms of Raiders and missiles are coming our way." Hoshi explained. Which was already clear from the huge numbers of small red dots appearing on the DRADIS.

"So we are staying put like sitting ducks?" Fisk asked. "Let us take the fight to the enemy. We should all charge in the same direction, less outnumbered that way."

"Are you the admiral?" Cain retorted "Our orders are to defend the shipyard. We'll only move when Corman orders us to."

* * *

The 10 Viper squadrons of the Pegasus, 200 fighters, in total had just joined themselves together into one huge formation under the command of the CAG, Cole 'Stinger' Taylor. The Vipers were flanked by the ship's 50 Raptors.

Stinger looked out of his cockpit. To his sides he could barely make out the formations of the other Battlestars and Carriers. In front of him he saw only a few specks, the Basestars, their Raiders and missiles were still too far to be seen with the naked eye.

Taylor ordered his formation to a halt they were to make up a defensive position between the destroyer, of the new if rather basic _Nehelenia_-class, to their left and the missile frigate, a _Nineveh_, to their right. These two ships were to decimate the incoming Cylons with their flak and shrapnel missiles. The frigate had just fired its first salvo at the enemy. The destroyer by contrast was mostly a defensive support ship: despite its small size it sported as much flak and PD as a Battlestar, though nearly no other weapons.

As could be seen on the DRADIS the Raiders were spreading themselves out to reduce the effectiveness of the incoming flak forming a huge formation, in a perfect shape except for the few Raiders who flew ahead in order to shoot down missiles and the holes the Cylons had left in their formation to allow ECM, EW and chaff spreading missiles to pass through. As the Raiders came close enough to be seen with the naked eye it became clear they flew in erratic, zigzagging patterns, making it impossible to get a target lock at them. Despite this they still flew with perfect coordination, not a single fighter accidently flying into the firing arc of one of those behind him, showcasing a superhuman ability of organization.

_I hope they are not as good in dogfighting as in formation flying._ Stinger thought.

As Taylor noticed on the DRADIS that the farthest defence satellites were already 'gone', the destroyer started to fire its guns with all her might at the Raiders as if trying to prove the frigate it was better at shooting down fighters than its silly missiles which get shot down before coming within proximity of the enemy anyway.

"The enemy is nearly within firing distance, CAG" He heard on his formation's radio frequency.

Stinger encouraged his pilots with feigned enthusiasm. "Well, then time to show our colleagues in the escorts how one best demolishes tin-cans." _If reinforcements don't show up soon we will be annihilated._

* * *

"New DRADIS contacts, sir"

"IFF?" Cain asked.

"Hurray! It is the Helios Gamma System Reserve! err, sir." Hoshi announced.

"Finally." She replied. _The cavalry has arrived._

A dozen Mithra-class Strikestars appeared on the DRADIS surrounded by circa twenty other ships, half of them destroyers but also corvettes, frigates and even two carriers.

The Mithras near-instantly fired their first salvo of missiles, according to Colonial doctrine those were to be ECM missiles, distracting the Cylons from the real threats. The next salvo would consist of guidance missiles who were supposed to help the following salvos of shipkillers find their way to the Basestars.

"New radiation detected, the Cylons are spooling their jump drives. Only the ones closest to the System Reserve I mean." Hoshi explained. "They also appear to have held some Raiders in reserve and are now sending them to our reinforcements."

"Ah." Cain replied, she had already been wondering why their birds appeared to be only outnumbered 7-to-1.

RADIOLOGICAL ALARM

"Oh, gods!" Colonel Belzen screamed. "All Basestars have fired nukes at us!"

"All of them?" Fisk wondered.

"Yes all of them." Belzen appeared to be in shock from the sheer amount of destructive force coming towards them.

"Hurry up! Do your work! Prepare the defences!" Cain yelled at them.

It appeared to work as they started to frantically shout orders and demands for new information.

* * *

The Cylon fleet was divided in 6 sections, which could be compared to the sides of a cube if it weren't for the fleet's formation consisting out of a hollow sphere. Each section was led by a Command Basestar twice as massive as a normal Basestar. They contained two Hybrids, one to manage the ship itself and the other to coordinate the ships placed under it. And they also were contrary to the other Basestars screened by two escorts, defending them with their flak, PD and ECM.

In the Command Basestar of the 5th section of the Jonathan Cavil (he picked this name to avoid confusion as there were already two Cavils named John) was leading the part of the Cylon fleet under attack by the Strikestars.

"Order our screens to focus on protecting the centre of their assigned Basestars." Jonathan ordered as soon he noticed the missiles coming from behind. Should an arm get blown up they can regrow it in a week or two, they had plenty of spare armour and algae drab left for this purpose, but if the heart of a Basestar gets destroyed the arms too were lost.

The Hybrid annoyedly replied with, "The king has ordered his son to be born.", which apparently was Hybridese for 'I already did that, Captain Obvious.'.

"Well anyway, move forward, to the shipyard I mean, we need to stay as far as possible from their guns." The One ordered.

"Wait, a minute." A Five protested. "But then we may come in range of Corman's Battlestars."

"I know but they are further away and have more pressing things to distract them." Jonathan returned.

"But they are Battlestars and lots of them, I suggest we move sideways, away from both of them." The Eight said.

"Going sideways won't help us, it won't sufficiently increase our distance." Four retorted. "We must move diagonally, even at the point closest to the shipyard fleet nearly all of their shots will miss us anyway and it is nearly as good at getting away from the Reserve Fleet without running straight into Corman's guns."

"We need to call a vote on this." Six said.

"Voting in the middle of combat, are you mad?" Jonathan screamed at her.

"I vote for Four's proposal." Three said.

"I'll need to consult the Hybrid before making a decision." Two said

"We have no time for this. You're leaving us as sitting ducks." Jonathan shouted. _Ah, democracy, works like one should expect from an invention of humanity._

"A smart chess piece moves by itself." The Hybrid said. She had decided to start already moving away from the reserve fleet whilst the Humanoid Cylons were arguing with each other.

_Sometimes I have the feeling the least insane Hybrids must think we are but a waste of algae drab and oxygen (well except the scientists and infiltrators offcourse). _One thought. _Luckily my model line has after their coup taken precautions against the Hybrids or another model number trying to overthrow us._

* * *

"Blackberry is down." Stinger heard on the radio, another dead pilot. He was relieved it was not himself who died. A small part of his mind not completely absorbed with staying alive realized he would later feel very guilty for this.

The Vipers shot down two Raiders for each of their own they lost, the Cylons clearly prioritized cheapness above durability when designing them. The escorts took down another two per downed Viper. Thus the Cylons were clearly winning.

"One of the destroyer's flak batteries is down!"

"What!?" Taylor looked down at his DRADIS screen, a handful of Raiders had slipped past their flanks and manoeuvred themselves in a dead angle not covered by the destroyer's flak and PD, and were now aiming for the ship's turrets. _It's nearly as if they stole the ship's blueprints and analysed it for any weak spots. Oh, right, they did._

"Lioness, get your Vipers together and eliminate those Raiders sniping that _Nehelenia_." Stinger ordered, the remains of her squadron were closest to the area.

"Yes, I'll do my best." She replied. Her voice sounded different then ever before, he was unsure whether this was thanks to fear, anger or despair.

"Don't forget to coordinate with the ship's captain, we don't want any friendly fire."

Then a blip on Taylor's interface indicated radiation coming from his side. He quickly turned to get a visual and noticed multiple Cylon tracer salvos barely missing him. _Did that alarm just save my life?_

In the direction the radiation was coming from he saw around a dozen tiny specks, presumably missiles, heading towards the destroyer guarded by a dozen 'merely' small specks, presumably Raiders. Offcourse they just had to go through the newly created hole in the destroyer's flak coverage.

"The destroyer is asking for help, apparently their rudders were jammed after being shot at by the Cylons now they can no longer turn and-"

"Squadron 4-to-6 go after the nuke that is threatening the _Nehelenia_. Disengage your current targets protect the destroyer." Stinger spoke in his radio. _One nuke, eleven decoys, twelve Raiders, if we quickly take out the Raiders we should have enough time over to safely destroy the missiles._

* * *

The Command Basestar of the 5th Section missed two of its arms, they had just been shot off by Shipkiller Missiles.

In front of the ship its two escorts, retrofitted Cerastes Defensive Gunships left over from the previous war, were constantly spinning on their spines. So that after one of their point-defence batteries had just fired a burst of ammo, another came into the position to fire whilst the first was busy with reloading, all made possible thanks to improvements in targeting computers since the previous war. This makes maximum use of all the ships' guns, albeit at the cost of making the Humanoid Cylons aboard seasick.

As expected the Admiral of the Reserve Fleet, whomever he/she might be, had left the Strikestars and carriers in the back 'safely' behind the screens and gunships. Jonathan had already ordered a Raider to be sent to the reserve with their coordinates, luckily the other models had not been in the mood to debate that. _Soon those pesky Colonials would have quite the surprise. _The One thought.

The Raiders they had held in reserve now entered the fight with the incoming Vipers. As they outnumbered them only '2-to-1', it looked like the Cerasteses soon have to defend not only against missiles.

When the Colonials were only a few thousands of kilometres away they also opened fire with their KEW.

As Jonathan sensed the Datastream, he 'saw' the munitions streaming out of the guns aimed at them. He 'felt' pinpricks whenever one landed on a Cylon ship, the humans were aiming at their centres.

The FTL drives should be ready within a few minutes. He hoped to not lose too many ships by then, that was already bad without the other Cylons' reproaches. Or to lose his own ship, dying was not a pretty experience afterall.

Then he noticed a gaping hole in the Datastream, that was already one Cylon ship less.

* * *

"Another Cylon Baseship blown up by the reinforcements." Could be heard in the Pegasus' CIC

This was met with great cheers.

_That, was to be expected with how few screens the Cylons have. _Cain thought. _Only one per Baseship, did they expect their fighters could always take out most missiles being flung at them and duel our corvettes and frigates while they are at it?_

"If there weren't so many Cylons I'd start complaining they should be leaving more of them for us." The Tactical Officer joked.

Then the radiological alarm went off.

"What? They have fired even more nukes at us!" Colonel Belzen lamented.

"No Heavy Raiders jumped behind the Reserve Fleet, they're armed with nukes."

Even from the CIC one could see the Mithra's were in grave trouble. To better defend them against the Basestars' missiles and Raiders the destroyers and Vipers had positioned themselves in front of the Strikestars.

"Wow, right behind them. That's what I call precision jumping." Lieutenant-Colonel Fisk said, as on the DRADIS small red dots, representing missiles, began coming out the newly jumped in Heavy Raiders.

"Focus on our own fight!" Cain commanded. _Sometimes they make me wish I was allowed to shoot my subordinates._ She made a mental note to adapt Colonial doctrine to the excellent Cylon jump capability.

"New ships jumped in, sir." Hoshi announced.

"IFF?"

"Friendly, the Galactica, the Triton, the Yashuman, the Solaria, the Columbia and over a dozen minor ships."

"Great." Cain replied. _They should distract the Cylons from us, if not they should at least take out a few Baseships whilst their Raiders are going after us._

"The closest Cylons to them seem to have started to prepare to jump away, sir, again." A sensor operator announced.

* * *

The Pegasus' Vipers had already taken down half the Raiders escorting the missiles, but now they were attacked in their flanks by a group of Heavy Raiders trailing behind the rest of the swarm.

The missiles' fiery tails grew bigger as they pushed their engines beyond the melting point.

"Squadron 4, go after those Heavy Raiders. Squadron 6, cover us. Squadron 5, we're going after the missiles." As Stinger was the leader he felt obliged to give himself at least a fair share of the danger, in this case the most dangerous task was strafing the missiles.

First missile down, the other squadrons were doing their best to provide keep the enemy busy.

Some far away Raiders begun sniping Squadron 5 as they flew in a line to get a good shot at the missiles.

Second missile down, the brave pilot who shot it was already dead before he saw his work.

Third missile down, as the missiles kept closing in on the destroyer the Vipers had to turn constantly. It would not take long before they had already shot past them.

Fourth missile down, this one Taylor had shot himself.

Fifth missile down, now Stinger noticed that they had already lost so many pilots that half the remaining missiles had no one shooting at them.

Sixth missile down. _Knowing my luck it will turn out to be one of them we can't even reach anymore that will turn out to be the nuke._

Seventh missile down, the radiological alarm turned off.

Now Taylor immediately turned his Viper to help his remaining comrades fend off the Cylons.

The frigate was not so lucky however, a huge flash lit up on its nose. The area of impact vaporized, the hull around it melted. Then the rest of the ship was destroyed by secondary explosions.

_Another bunch too many of good people dead._

"Hey," someone shouted over the radio. "It looks like most of them already passed us."

Then Stinger looked at his DRADIS, all Raiders and missiles were now heading straight to the Scorpion shipyards simply ignoring them and the rest of the first line of defences.

He contacted the Pegasus for orders. _The Cylons had the whole way too here to accelerate, no way were going to catch up to them in time._

He heard the voice of Hoshi. "You are to hook up with one of the jumped in fleets and help them out, so Cain ordered."

"That doesn't sound a lot like her, sir."

"Her actual words were 'find a Basestar under attack and help kill it'." Taylor smiled in response to this. _That's how I know her._

He ordered his airwing, what was left of it anyway, back into a formation. As the fleet with the Galactica was closest, he decided to go towards them.

* * *

"Let's kick some Cylon asses!" Mayor Jackson Spencer shouted as his Viper was shot out of one of the Galactica's launch tubes. The CAG was even more scared than that time he nearly flew into a meteor during training, but to his subordinates he had to pretend to be fearless.

After letting the other pilots make a few remarks about 'turning toasters into Swiss cheese' or 'slicing open tin cans' he sternly enforced radio silence, they were going to need all their attention.

The Mark VII to his left was piloted by Starbuck. He had promoted her to his wingman as she probably was the best pilot on the Galactica. The Cylons had gotten their hands on Colonial fighter doctrine and combat manuals and Kara Thrace always did her best to ignore those.

At this distance the Basestars still looked like specks to Spencer, only his DRADIS revealing they were sending masses of Raiders and missiles their way.

_Let's hope the Old Girl's guns can wreak some havoc upon the Cylons' ships, as we might be too busy with surviving for doing that._

He forced his mind to go back to all the trainings and simulations he had gone through in the hope that the more routine this appeared to his mind the less nervous he would be. It did not work as well as he had hoped.


	9. Armageddon Arrives part 2

The mood in the Pegasus' CIC was getting desperate, understandable considering what was coming their way.

Belzen noted on the DRADIS the red dots the farthest from them were moving faster towards them than the closest red dots. As the salvos of missiles gradually converged towards each other, the colonel made some quick calculations. "Heavens, they have set their missiles and Raiders to hit us all at the exact same time. I doubt our flak can stop them."

"Our armour will." Cain hoped.

Then the Pegasus started to be rhythmically and gently rocked by the recoil of its flak guns and PD, the projectiles were within range.

Meanwhile the Raiders placed themselves just before most of the missiles (with the exception of ECM and chaff spreading missiles, those were in front of them) and opened fire on the Basestars turrets, DRADIS antennas, communications dishes and other weak spots.

"Elysium, they are using their Raiders as shields for their missiles! They must be as expendable to them as our missiles are to us." Belzen muttered.

Even shooting the Raiders down didn't render them harmless. All the debris made aiming at the missiles behind them a lot harder, not to mention what would happen when all that molten steel crashed into the ship.

* * *

Jonathan's Command Basestar was violently shaken by the, now constant, impacts of various types of Colonial ammunition.

"FTL is ready within 15 seconds." The Hybrid announced.

"Jump as soon as possible." The One replied, this time the other models only nodded instead of arguing. "I want visuals on the Reserve Fleet, its carriers and Strikestars."

Then one of the walls of the command room turned out be a screen. On it one saw the ships that launched the missiles and Vipers which had inflicted so many damage on them. They were one by one consumed by nuclear fire, defenceless against this attack from their rear.

As the ship jumped away Jonathan wished he could have seen them all being blown up.

Now he hoped what they had already send at the Colonials sufficed to exterminate those pests.

* * *

The Pegasus' few remaining Vipers and Raptors were nearing their destination. The pilots already were braking with their crafts' reverse engines.

The Basestar in front of them was nearly undefended, its fighters battling those of the Galactica, its escort defending its other side against the Triton's missiles, its missile turrets silent.

Stinger was wondering how to best damage the lumbering behemoth in front of them. _This thing's armour whilst not as good as that of a Battlestar will probably still stop our bullets and we haven't got any anti-ship missiles with us._

Then his eyes went to the ends of the ship's spires, according to the 'admiralty's source' expensive sensor arrays were located there.

Taylor spoke in his radio. "Okay, boys and girls, let us strafe the tips of this starfish's arms. I heard vulnerable radomes are located there. But watch out for any PD fire."

* * *

"Yes also fire the larboard flak batteries!" Cain yelled over a communications channel, she was giving orders to the commander of the Penumbra, a _Valkyrie_-class Battlestar recently placed under her command.

"But, but, then we'll also hit your ship." The intimidated commander replied.

"Do it! Our armour can easily take flak, nukes not so much."

Cain now turned her eyes to the DRADIS screens, thanks to the amount of ECM and Raider debris the only thing they showed beyond clutter were friendly ships. Suddenly a screen went fully black.

"That must have been a Cylon Raider which kamikazed into a sensor array." Belzen deduced.

Then the Pegasus was rocked by a heavy shock. Everybody who could not grab something in time fell over, including Cain who landed with her nose on the croupier table.

On the Damage Control display lots of red lights appeared. And some of the other displays simply went off, together with most of the lights.

"What was that?" The helmsman asked as she pulled herself up with a handle. "A nuke?"

"Yes, we were hit in the starboard side of the bow by a nuke." Chief Engineer Garner answered as he pushed himself off the ground with his hands. "What else could it have been? A Baseship going kamikaze?"

The emergency lights started to slowly turn themselves on, banishing the darkness to the corners of the room.

"Any further radiation detected from that direction?" Cain asked, blood dripping from her nose. _The last thing we need now is another nuke heading towards us whilst our defences haven't even partly recovered._

"None at all, sir, which I'm grateful for." Lieutenant Hoshi answered.

"Incoming Heavy Raiders, sir." Said the sole DRADIS operator whose screen still had any signal. "It looks like they are on a boarding course."

"Oh, great." Cain sighed. "Ready the marines. Distribute heavy weaponry amongst the crew, those which aren't busy with something else. Also ask the Thebes to prepare some marines to reinforce us, when the fight outside has calmed down offcourse."

"That won't go sir, I'm afraid." Hoshi answered. "The Thebes was hit by three nukes, they are probably too busy with trying to survive to send help over in Raptors."

"Frack." Cain shouted as the Battlestar was shaken by the impact of the first Heavy Raider. _Poorly enough their cannons are too inaccurate to reliably hit a certain hallway, otherwise we could try to eliminate the Cylons that way._

* * *

The Galactica's and the Triton's Vipers battled against twice their numbers of Raiders, taking in account the qualitative difference one would expect it to be an easy fight. But the Cylons played well to their own advantages.

The Raiders used their superior agility and coordination well, managing to let the majority of their craft engage a minority of the Vipers gaining an even larger local superiority. The Colonials constantly tried to counter them, however the combination of the Cylons' inhumanly fast decision-making and anticipation of human moves meant that whenever they changed their positions it already was too late, the Cylons already switched to a new tactic. To make matters worse the Colonials who tried to reinforce their comrades often found themselves under a barrage of the Basestars' shrapnel missiles.

As his own squadron found itself suddenly attacked in the flanks Spencer cursed internally. _When I found out their numbers I had expected to quickly brush those cheap, tiny craft aside. But they seem to always manoeuvre themselves where we least want them._

The CAG quickly turned, however the Cylons were already very close.

As Spencer prepared his guns he saw a Raider on a ramming course.

A bullet pierced his windshield, it hit the wall behind him.

He managed to barely evade the Raider, he thought he had managed to damage one of its wings.

Several more bullets hit his craft from behind, the Raider must have turned.

"Yess, I think that was the third toaster I downed today." Starbuck sounded over the radio as that Raider disappeared on his DRADIS screen, together with the missile Kara fired at it.

"Hey, I was already shooting at him, kill stealer!" 'Jolly' Anders shouted back.

"You were already missing him, you mean?" Kara replied.

Then Spencer ordered the formation together to reinforce another squadron in combat, knowing the Cylons they had engaged likely will already be somewhere else when they reach them. _We still are at the winning hand against the machines but at this rate there is no way we'll have dispatched them before the Baseships have jumped away._

Spencer was just making a turn to join the chase of a damaged Heavy Raider his squadron discovered when an alarm went off in his cockpit.

A quick glance on the screen readouts revealed that some extra Heavy Raiders had just jumped in.

Then he cursed the insult which used to make his beloved mother the angriest in his youth, hearing the radio chatter he wasn't the only one.

* * *

Hallway 26C of the Battlestar Pegasus.

Specialists Gage, Vireem and Lieutenant Alestair Thorne were taking cover behind some metal crates. Their guns were loaded with explosive rounds. They were not marines but everyone with a 'non-essential' job was given some sort of heavy weaponry to act as a second defence line.

"I hope they won't get past the marines." Vireem said with a tense voice. They were part of the defence line for Auxiliary Damage Control. If the marines did their job they, like the rest of the non-marines, weren't even supposed to see a Centurion. But no plan survives contact with the enemy.

Gage's radio started beeping.

After a short call he said. "Thorne, I heard Hallway 27B is losing pressure. Apparently the toasters cut it open."

"Ok, oxygen masks on." The lieutenant replied. "Remember someone has to be on the lookout at all times."

They just had all put them on when a handle of one of the many massive steel hatches into the hallway started to turn.

All three started to aim their rifles at the door.

Then a small slit appeared in their direction. Air started flowing out the opening.

Then Vireem shot.

A flash appeared on the other side of the opening, followed by the sound of metal footsteps.

"I thought I saw a centurion's hand." Vireem said through his oxygen mask's radio.

The door started to slowly fall shut by itself.

"Maybe, but now the tin cans know we are here." Thorne replied.

* * *

The Pegasus had stopped shaking from constant impact, all the missiles and Raiders had already passed them. For now, as this was also happening on the other side of the Colonial fleet, so they would soon be attacked from the rear.

"Sir, the Cylons are nearing Auxiliary Damage Control." Colonel Fisk announced, after a short phone call with Thorne.

"Reinforcements underway?"

"Affirmative, sir, the marines held in reserve and the squads made up of canteen personnel."

"Good, tell those cooks they need not worry about collateral damage." Cain ordered. "The toasters will do their best to make the room be destroyed with them anyway."

"Sir, new ships have just jumped in. IFF confirms the Battlestar Anahit is with them." Hoshi announced.

"The flagship of the Helios Delta Reserve Fleet? Admiral Shahin has arrived then." Cain replied. _If we are already receiving reinforcements from other systems I assume they had less Cylons jumping in than here._

* * *

The pilots of the Pegasus' cheered as a second DRADIS dish had fallen of the Basestar. They had parked themselves a few dozen kilometres from the Cylon ship and their RCSs were glowing red from overuse.

There was something wrong with either the quantity or quality of the enemy's PD as they had lost yet but one Viper to it. Not that Taylor was complaining.

"Stinger, look!" A pilot shouted over the radio. "They are preparing missiles."

"I thought they had ran out of missiles?" Somebody else replied.

_So, they had only used up all their anti-ship missiles? _Taylor wondered as contrails appeared on his screen showing a zoomed in view of the Basestar.

"Turn on your reverse engines. Shoot the missiles." He had a bad feeling about this.

213 missiles were turning towards the Vipers (some missile turrets were disabled by missed shots).

As the first shots flashed past the missiles, the projectiles' tops opened and their sides fell off revealing four missiles within.

"D'oh." Stinger shouted.

As if to taunt him the new missiles once again split into four.

_Why me? What did I do to anger the gods?_

Then he noticed the speed at which the rockets were accelerating, their engines were literally melting from the strain. _Wait a minute, how are they supposed to adjust their course if they burned through their engines?_

For one last time the missiles multiplied their amount with four, the newest missiles quickly turned on their brand new engines.

"We're all gonna die!" He heard over the radio.

"Great way to keep up morale." Taylor retorted.

* * *

Alastair Thorne and his men were nervously hiding behind cover.

Then, not one but, two hatches started to be opened.

"I'll take care of the closest opening." Thorne ordered. "You two cover the furthest door."

"A hand, I see a Cylon's hand!" Gage shouted as he pointed with his gun.

"Fire! You fools! Fire!" Alastair commanded as he fired into the closest hatch.

His two subordinates pumped explosive rounds into the other opening.

"I think I shot off a hand." Vireem cheered.

Hand grenades were thrown from the other side.

"No, I was the one who hit him!" Gage yelled indignant.

"Duck! Idiots! Take cover!" Thorne ordered as the two grenades were bouncing on the floor.

Then a loud bang sounded, the sound of a hatch falling shut.

The grenades stopped moving just before reaching the crates. Then they fastened themselves to the floor with glue.

Air continued to flow away through the still open hatch.

"Their bombs haven't yet exploded?" Vireem asked.

"Timed bombs." Gage replied. "They had them in the previous war. Sometimes they exploded after five seconds, sometimes after five minutes, to force the enemy to stay behind cover all the time."

"And sometimes they exploded not at all." Thorne finished him. "So they can sneak on their enemy whilst they are hiding behind cover."

"And once all the air is gone we can't hear them coming." Vireem realized.

"So that's why we were given those periscopes?" Gage wondered.

Thorn sighed. "Yes."

"How long till reinforcements arrive?" Vireem asked. A small part of him wanted to simply run away, but a larger part was more afraid of Cain than the Cylons.

* * *

Kara Thrace was getting worried. In the beginning of the engagement she had thrown herself with contempt of death in the fight. But as the battle continued her comrades kept disappearing on DRADIS and the radio, and then more Cylons jumped in.

_When this battle will be over, I'll need a drink. _She thought as used suppressive fire to prevent some Raiders from closing in on her squadron.

"Prepare to retreat everyone." Jackson Spencer ordered over the radio. "Adama has given us the permission to fallback. Our retreat will be covered by the Raptors."

Starback immediately fired her last remaining missile and started turning, even before the missile had the time to release itself.

She also emptied her Viper's chaff dispensers.

Then she took a look at her DRADIS screens. _Luckily the Galactica is up close, if it weren't I'd be doubting Spencer's competence in giving the Cylons so much time to hit us in our rear._

The last to turn were the Raptors, firing all their leftover missiles at the bandits, keeping them hopefully too busy to give chase. The Raptors of the _Valkyries_' also were equipped with backward-facing automatic cannons instead of FTL drives, like their predecessors in the First Cylon War. This move was controversial, but Starbuck was already becoming a supporter of it.

Then she noticed on her DRADIS screen the movements of the closest Raider were becoming a lot less erratic.

"Watch out!" She yelled on her squadron's radio. _It clearly is lining up to snipe somebody._

Gunshots flashed throughout her squadron, the first pair barely missed Spencer's cockpit, but the last few tore apart his engines. _They're shooting the leader first._

Then the bullet traces stopped, a look at the DRADIS revealed the craft which made them was already in pieces, taken apart by a Raptor's 'toaster slayer'-cannon. _It knew it would not survive, now I can't even take revenge._

Thrace turned off her main engines and turned her Mark VII.

"Starbuck, what are you doing?" Spencer asked over the radio.

"I'm gonna save your ass, boss." She restarted her engines.

"Kara, no! This is madness, save yourself!" The CAG screamed as their Vipers collided.

"But I thought babysitting on you was part of being your wingman." Thrace returned whilst she pushed her engines to their limits.

Normally Vipers have a faster acceleration then Raiders, however should two Vipers end up being moved by the same set of engines this general rule no longer held up.

This quickly became clear to Thrace when the bullets started zipping just past them.

"Frack!" The two pilots cursed.

Starbuck's fighter received multiple hits, the engines and lights fell out and the hydraulic fluid started leaking out of the wings.

"That's it, I'll eject." She yelled as she pulled the lever. _If I must die anyway I might just as well give the toasters an extra target to waste their bullets on._

As Thrace was shot out of her plane she saw Spencer also had ejected himself.

Just after this their Vipers fell apart under gunfire.

She turned towards the enemy so she could see how long she still had to life.

All Raiders had turned around, except one. It was still so far the only reason she noticed him was because she saw a tiny red speck, its eye.

Yet this distance mattered not, she was an accelerationless target.

Bullets zipped past her.

Starbuck closed her eyes and wondered what to tell her mother should she meet her.

When she opened her eyes to see how the Elysian Fields looked like, she noticed she was still in space. She could not find the Raiders red eye. _Either the toaster must have turned thinking the bullets already underway would have sufficed to kill me, or it got shot by someone else._

Thrace turned around and saw the Galactica approaching, together with lots of other ships the Old Girl was sending lots of rounds after the retreating Cylons.

"Yay!" She shouted in her radio. "Can you believe this Jacky? We are still alive."

As he did not answer she turned towards him.

His space suit was pierced at multiple places. It was not a pretty sight.

_Shoot the leader first. _Her thoughts echoed.

It did not take long before a Raptor appeared to pick her up.

* * *

Taylor had shot down but a tiny fraction of the missiles heading his way. Luckily for him those tiny projectiles were closer to semi-guided flechettes instead of true anti-fighter missiles. Most of the projectiles which had survived his gunfire had missed him and after passing the Viper formation they had started ramming each other into oblivion due to their heatseeking tendencies.

Most of them. Those which ended up hitting him sufficed to turn his Viper into swiss cheese. The windows of his cockpit where shattered by multiple strikes, around his seat five exit holes were to be seen, hydraulic fluid was leaking out of his left wing, the machine gun and missile mount of his right wing were completely torn to pieces. _I believe it would be easier to just scrap this plane and bring me a new one then trying to repair this mess._

The Basestar had not fired a second salvo of these 'hole-makers' at them. _Now I wonder, did they had only one set of them or are they so short ranged we now are too far for them? Or maybe…_

Then the Basestar jumped away together with the rest of its section.

_…__that?_

"So?" Stinger asked. "Let's do a headcount. Who else survived? We start with Squadron 1."

By the time he arrived at Squadron 2, suddenly a lamp went red in his cockpit. Something had disabled his main engine. _Don't tell me one of those pesky micro-missiles survived his fratricidal siblings to attack me in the rear._

* * *

Gage was looking through his periscope. "I think I see…"

Then the top of the periscope was shot off by a bullet. "…a centurion."

"Prepare to raise and shoot on my mark." Thorn said.

"Three." Everyone got hold of his two guns.

"Two." Everyone tensed up.

"One." Gage prepared to jump sideways and Vireem to stand up.

"Go." They all appeared from behind their cover with blazing guns in both hands.

Wrist mounted machineguns returned fire.

The last thing Vireem saw were the two Centurions they were fighting against, one of them missing a hand, then a bullet went through his head.

Gage had but few bullets flying around him, his sideways move must somehow have surprised the Centurions.

One his bullets struck the first toaster in his left leg.

The Centurion fell over, both causing his own shots to miss as blocking the fire of the second tin-can just behind him.

As Thorn finished off the fallen Cylon with a few more explosive round the remaining foe retreated towards the other side of the opened hatch.

Gage started running forwards. "Let's finish the toaster before he can recover. I'll avenge you Vireem."

"No, be careful." Thorn shouted back as he slowly followed him. "You can't just recklessly attack without orders."

Then the two grenades still lying there received a radio signal.

The two men were, without their cover, turned into splashes on the walls by the ensuing explosions.

Then the Centurion appeared again.

Its red eye scanned the hallway as two other Centurions held in reserve arrived behind him.

[Tactical analysis: obstacle dealt with, albeit at higher losses than expected]

[Resume primary task: reach Auxiliary Damage Control]

[Change of strategy: deemed unnecessary]

[ETA: 214.54 seconds]

As the Centurion was turning the handle of the hatch to the next hallway he received a radio signal from his comrades that something was going on behind them.

He turned to see the hatch to hallway 25C open.

Two marines crawled out.

[Strategical analysis: new obstacle, put primary task on hold.]

The marines were quickly turned into swiss cheese.

As the Cylon was scanning the reflection of hallway 25C in the hatch door for more humans, the hatch behind was being opened.

The Centurion fell over, bumping into his comrades, accidentally dragging them with him in his fall.

As it was pushing itself back up, its left arm was shot off by an explosive round.

"Death to the toasters!" The men coming in screamed in their radios as the air of hallway 26D flew out around them.

The Centurion turned its head as the radios of its two comrades went silent.

The first person it saw was a tiny woman wearing cook's clothes and carrying an absurdly big butcher's knife.

As she raised her knife a cruel smile appeared behind her oxygen mask.

[Emotional analysis: the woman with the sword is hysterically angry, in dire need of psychological counselling and possibly medication]

[Estimated chance of survival: 0.17%]

Then the Cylon's red eye went forever dark as the sharp piece of metal pierced it.

* * *

Meanwhile the Pegasus was surrounded by Raiders on the way back after strafing the Scorpion Shipyards. They all flew backwards so they would have decelerated back to the velocity of the Baseships on the opposite edge of the Cylon fleet when they would land on them.

The Cylons flew through the regions with barely any flak coverage, not that difficult actually as most of the Pegasus' PD and flak was already taken out by the incoming wave and the Battlestar was too busy with the boarding centurions to manoeuvre itself into a better position.

As the Raiders flew by they threw their leftover bullets at the Pegasus. Her meters thick armour simply shrugged them off but they weren't aiming at it anyway.

In the CIC Cain was seething as DRADIS screens went black, communication channels went offline and green or yellow lights went orange or red on the armaments overview.

"I'll make the Cylons pay tenfold for every mutilation they inflicted on you, my dear boy." She whispered to her ship.

"Great news everyone!" Hoshi shouted. "The centurions thrust to Auxiliary Damage Control has been broken."

"Excellent!" Cain replied. "Tell them to hold the line and avoid taking risks. We should soon receive extra marines with which we'll simply roll the toasters up."

The battle was nearly over so it seemed. Some Basestars had already started to spool their FTL drives, the rest waited as they still needed to pick up the remaining Raiders.

"How many men did we lost?" Cain inquired as the CIC slowly calmed down.

"No, idea." Belzen answered.

"But, I do know many who I had called a friend were between them." He continued as the first tear came out of his eyes.

Cain did not know what to say.

"Here is a preliminary rapport of our losses." Hoshi said as he opened a list on a screen somewhere. "Only the ones of which we already have a modicum of certainty are on it."

Cain swallowed as she saw the huge size. _How big will it be once we can really start counting?_

"The Cylons will not stop to mourn, we can't either." Cain said as she did her best to avoid sobbing.

"The best way to remember the fallen is to avenge them." She continued. _I will fight this war to its bitter end, no matter what it does to me._


	10. The eye of the storm part 1

**Chapter 10 : The eye of the storm 1/2**

**The CIC of the Galactica**

**The 94****th ****day before Armistice Day : 15:09**

Commander Adama looked at a DRADIS screen. It contained a handful of green dots, Raptors searching for surviving pilots and salvage, navigating through a field of red dots, debris.

Colonel Thigh looked strangely content. "To be entirely honest, this whole war thing has a positive effect on me. I'm feeling more alive than I have in years."

"Ah, I had already noticed you had not even touched a cup ever since you heard the Cylons were coming." Adama replied.

"Oh, please." Thigh was annoyed with this. "I am sure it is not only that."

"Maybe, but then most of my crew would disagree."

Tigh laughed. "The crew does not like the me? That's what happens when a XO does his job."

"Hooray, sir!" Dualla shouted as she accidentaly dropped her mic. "It just came in. They found 'Jolly' Anders. He's still alive."

"Good news." The colonel replied. "That's one funeral less we need to attend."

Then an alarm went off, apparently a piece of debris had moved off course.

Then a green dot disappeared from the DRADIS.

"What was that?" Gaeta asked.

"Warn the other Raptors." The commander commanded.

"Oh, gods. Don't tell me the Cylons can now play for death too." Tigh lamented.

"Bring out some Vipers to guard the Raptors. The search must go on." Adama ordered. Not only was it their duty to their pilots, they also had received orders to salvage any Cylon FTL-drive and -computer they can, in the hopes of reverse engineering them.

"Well, I hope they'll have more luck when salvaging from Scorpion Fleet Shipyards." Thigh exclaimed. The Cylons had focused all of their nukes on the ships docked in it instead of the shipyard itself, they must have thought they would have won the war before any completely new ships would have been finished.

"I'm afraid not." Dualla lamented. "I heard not a single transport survived the carnage, and I presume the half-finished Battlestars won't be much better off considering they'd be high priority targets. Oh, incoming call."

"Well, at least the stations repair facilities should be intact." Adama hoped.

"Wait? What?" Dualla shouted, once again dropping expensive equipment on the ground. Then she turned around. "Sir, one of our salvage teams must have gone mad. They claim that the Raider they are towing is clearly bleeding."

"Ah!" Adama replied. "I'll notify the admiralty, if nobody else hasn't. Apparently that 'source' of them was not completely bonkers after all."

"It was a defector, one of those 'reverse cyborgs'. Mark my words." Saul said as he straightened his uniform with his hand. "So short after the Cylons compromised the CNP, that can't be coincidence. It must've been a doubter who came to the conclusion he needs to choose which side he wants to be on, immediately."

"Ah, defective in both meanings of the word you mean." Dualla said.

"So anyone interested in making bets on its model line?" A marine asked. Whereupon he received a stern glance from sergeant Hadrian.

* * *

**Cain's personal room aboard the Battlestar Pegasus**

**15 : 20**

Helena Cain had just plugged in her personal holoband, usually reserved for training. The navy was about to organise a virtual meeting. This custom had mostly fallen out of favour after the First Cylon War, due to the general drive for de-networking. But it was still used in the occasion too many people were discussing too many things for the matter to be efficiently handled in text or voice communication and yet they had not the time to meet in person.

She put on the headset. As it took the application a lot of time to make the necessary handshakes for the data encryption, she had ample the time to choose a background. She picked 'The Park', she thought she could use a relaxing view after the horrors and stresses of battle, 'Underwater' would be even better for that but she always got distracted by the fishes.

After another few seconds of loading the first objects, the transparent screens in the corner of her view, started to appear.

"Ah, Cain. I see that you have already arrived." She heard to her right.

She turned and saw the avatar of Peter R. Corman (it looked younger and more muscular than the real admiral). There was only white behind him, the background was always loaded as last.

"You did your job admirably, sir." He saluted her as a few pine trees appeared behind him. "May I offer my condolences for the personnel you lost?"

"Thanks, sir." She saluted back. She hoped the formalities would soon be offer, she had not the time for them.

"Admiral Scipio and admiral Hanno are unable to connect to the holoroom." The server announced. "The FTL-communications arrays in the Helios Beta System have been destroyed in a Cylon raid."

"Wait, wasn't Rear Admiral Kravitz also in Beta?" Corman wondered.

Then Cain noticed Admiral Nagala (also more handsome then in real life). He was explaining how his defence of the Picon Fleet Headquarters went to Lieutenant Admirals Radic and Van De Castele. "…thus one could say it was the opposite of the Battle near Scorpia. We failed in saving Fleet HQ yet managed to inflict higher losses on the Cylons than the toasters inflicted on us."

As Nagala appeared to be finished Cain thought to ask him something. "Sir, do you have any news from Tauron." It and Picon were both located in Helios Alpha afterall.

"No, need to worry." He replied. "Your home planet saw no fighting, not even a diversionary attack."

Cain smiled out of relief.

Meanwhile Van De Castele and Radic had started a conversation with Deputy Director General Berkovich about tylium saving methods. Apparently the one-third of the Cylon force not involved with the attacks near Scorpia and Picon had committed a series of hit-and-run attacks on tylium mining and refining bases.

"Now that Vice Admiral Chandragupta has arrived, everyone is present." Corman announced, his face as serious all ways. "So I'll go to the first point: Cylon resurrection technology is probably real."

"What? Impossible!" Radic threw back.

"The research department of the Ministry of Health has investigated the brain tissue of some death Cylon Infiltrators during the attack. It contained the remains of destroyed, well, stuff in the shape of mitochondria. According to the eggheads they were destroyed by a combination of a sudden burst of energy and the exotic particles associated with FTL. No other explanation fitted quite as well, or that was what they said."

"Heavens! So it is true." Chandragupta exclaimed. "So their airwings keep getting more experienced no matter how many of their veterans we slaughter."

"I'm pretty sure that already was partly true in the first war." Funar replied. "It would have been easy for them to make back-ups of their MCPs, and them doing it would have explained a lot."

"Now on to the second point: the identity of our source." Corman continued. "The Cylons have found out who she is anyway."

In the window in the upper right corner of her view Cain could see that a new user was given permission to join the room: Cassandra Turner located somewhere near Caprica City. _Wasn't she the eccentric, yet competent and diligent undersecretary of industry?_

An avatar of a blonde woman quickly materialized. It looked very lifelike despite its low amount of voxels, suggesting sophisticated graphical optimization. Her appearance caused a few of the present to gasp for air.

She cheerily saluted and made a curtsy, as if she was a new ensign who met the commander on her first day and tried to hide her nervousity with a jovial demeanour. "3-156-B7-20, at your service."

"Heavens, it turns out your gut was right afterall!" Van De Castele said to the other Lieutenant Admiral.

"No, I had expected an Eight." Radic looked as if she had just lost a bet.

This coaxed a smile from the thing in front of them. "Ah, yes, that apparently also was the first assumption of a lot of my siblings when deducing treason."

"How do we know we can trust this thing?" Cain asked.

"Because if we were attacked without her warning and with the CNP backdoor spread over all our ships…" Nagala answered. _Good point._

"Not to mention all those Cylon agents who would have sabotaged your industrial bottlenecks had I not told you about them." The Cylon agent said.

Corman frowned. "You placed nearly half of them there yourself."

It laughed. "Yes, that is enough irony for it to be funny, isn't it?"

After it sank in her how big of a strategical asset she was Cain nearly wanted to hug the thing, with gloves on offcourse.

"As Nagala requested, I have made some predictions about the timing of the second assault." As the strategical asset said this three bell curves appeared in front of her, the first measuring hours, the second days, the last weeks. "The first is my prediction should they only resupply, refuel and rearm, the second for if they also patch up the lightly damaged ships and reorganize their fleet, the third also includes repairing the heavily damaged ship and overhauling their doctrine to suit the new circumstances. I suspect they will combine one and two and make their undamaged ships commit hit-and-run attacks whilst the rest undergo repairs, maybe the heaviest damaged ships get scraped for replacement parts. I don't know how many spare parts they have lying around."

"That's very quick how do they manage that?" Funar asked.

"Their idea of rushed repairs consists out of attaching prefabricated pieces of plating, the larger ones have weapons and all, on holes in the armour and let the Basestar itself regrow the internal parts, and minor damage is fixed by filling dents and hairline cracks in the armour with a quickly hardening organic compound. As to resupply: the low amount of types of craft and the uniform shapes of munition types helps with streamlining logistics and-."

"So their repaired ships are less effective than they were before?" Van De Castele asked.

"Sort of, whilst the repaired parts should contain less missile turrets and Raider launch tubes, they are sturdier, like how bone is strongest where it was once broken."

"But how accurate are your predictions?" Shahin asked. "Was your information not a bit outdated?"

"Already incalculated, just look at the size of the standard deviations. It is partly caused by the possibility that they without my knowledge managed to optimize the process. And, as you can see," She now pointed to the other tail of the bell curve. "I have also incalculcated the possibility that the increase of scale to untested levels will lead to unexpected delays."

"And do you know anything about Cylons strategy?" Asked Van De Castele.

"Only speculation, they certainly have changed their plans and I can only predict how my own model line will act."

"And what about the amount of fighters and other small craft they have? As I take the estimate of 300 Baseships comes from you." Asked Radic, the way she moved her hands revealed she was making notes in the real world.

Three shrugged. "No idea about fighters, when it comes to the amount of larger ships I had a few hints. For example they have a hydroponics station per Basestar so they can keep it and its escorts supplied with food even if the whole fleet operates at max activity. But I do know that their factories for actual ships, this includes not only war but also mining and transport ships, are designed to be capable of switching over to fighter or missile production with barely any efficiency loss. So should they run out of Raiders it will be but a temporary state."

"So is there anything you are actually capable to help us with?" Cain asked.

"Yes, Cylon technology. Unless they changed the interface of their FTL computers too much I should be capable of jury-rigging a salvaged Raider FTL drive to work on a Viper or a Raptor. Though I'm afraid that thanks to their larger sizes the red line will end up at respectively 1000 and 500 lightyears."

_Ah, excellent, that makes us no longer incapable of striking back at those toasters, this helps us even if we don't attack them as they will be forced to leave garrisons for the mere possibility._

"Secondly, with what I know of their communications system it should, once again except if they changed it too much, be possible to jam their IFF, messaging, missile guidance and so on. However I suspect they are already thinking of countermeasures."

"Ah, great, when can you begin?" Chandragupta asked.

"As we speak, a Raider wreckage with intact FTL is already underway to my location."

Cain was wringing her hands with glee at the prospect of jumping thousands of nuclear armed Assault Raptors behind the armistice line.

"But now the question is:" Continued the Cylon. "What do I got in exchange for it? I owe you nothing, in fact I have already saved all your lives."

"What!?" Corman shot back. "You are no position to make demands, toaster. Encase you don't-"

"Then you are forced to do it yourself. I wonder how many months it will take you to find it on your own." Three replied without showing any emotion, like if she was keeping a poker face during a card game.

Cain's face (in the real world not the V-world) became red with anger.

"What is it that you want?" Shahin asked unfazed, as if she had expected this and already knew the answer.

"Mercy for my misguided siblings."

"What!?" Cain spat out. "No way! They must pay for what they have done! Both in this war and the previous."

"Keep in mind that accepting surrenders is in your own self-interest as-"

"It makes the difference between capturing the Cylon technological-industrial complex intact or waging a decades long guerrilla war against a nomadic enemy?" Funar interrupted her. "Or that's what I already heard you say twice."

"Yes, am I not utmost reasonable, merely asking someone to do something that is in their own good?"

"Maybe, but that's up for the Quorum to decide." Nagala replied. "We are not a military dictatorship."

_Luckily, _Cain thought, _as if we were a military junta we need to get involved in politics. My head ends up hurting from all those debates about intercolonial migration, tax reforms and planetary healthcare systems. Not to mention that no matter what you do somebody will get offended and start a riot. Or the likelihood of being on the recieving end of libel, hatemail and deathtreats._

"I'm well aware of that. I merely wanted to already inform you. Well I'm off, already laying the groundwork so the time those politicians spent bickering is not wasted. But before I leave, as I'm in an accommodating mood I thought to make an exception for a thousand of my siblings. As you share the need for unreasonable revenge masquerading as justice with my kind, I suppose you want it encase you want to throw out of the airlock the Cylon Network's leadership and some fools stupid enough to look funny at you." The thing replied as her avatar slowly disappeared.

"May god protect you." The Cylon ended. "I'll pray for your evolution, sirs."

"Can 'Mrs Serial Numbers' still hear us?" Corman asked after a short silence.

"No, well except if she managed to hack us." Nagala replied.

"That is very unlikely, but that's just what I think." The server's announcer announced, much to Cains surprise. _She's a real person and not just a computer program?_

"Ah, excellent." Corman replied. "Maybe we can use her family to place pressure on her. What'd y' all think?"

Then everybody stared at him, Cain nodded and started to smile.

"It might work, but can we still trust her after that?" Nagala replied.

"And what if she pretends to be stuck? What if she's really stuck? How do we then know which of these it is?" Shahin asked.

Cain smirked. "Then we'll just keep looking for extra methods we can use to motivate her, then it will soon become clear whether she's doing her best. I think I already found a few."

"Oh, no." Van De Castele shook his head. "Heavy handed methods have a tendency to work counterproductive in interrogations. I believe it will be the same in this case, we have no need of her passive-aggressively taking revenge by stopping to be proactive in finding methods to help us or something."

"Plus, we could first wait a few days, to see what kind of decision the Quorum makes." Radic said. "She has promised to already start in the meantime, maybe the Quorum even accepts her demands."

"Or pretend to and then come back on their word." Corman enthusiastically added.

_That might indeed be the best option._ Cain Thought. _Well if it weren't for that those stupid politicians will probably frack it up and the whole thing ends up leaking to the public and Cassandra._

"So can we now talk about strategy and how to position our troops."

"Oh, and don't forgot requisitioning civilian craft and how to best convert them for military purposes." The Deputy Director General of logistics threw in.

* * *

**Area 15, a secret military base in an uninhabited desert around a 200 miles from Caprica city**

**15 : 38**

The atmospheric shuttle, a Mark I from the Galactica, had just parked on the concrete landing ground and its doors opened. Galen Tyrol and Cally quickly jumped out.

The chief looked around, the place was less busy then he had expected. Beyond the group they were supposed to meet he only noticed a pair of female snipers at a shooting range, discussing the best way to knit colourful flowers, whilst scoring perfect hits on moving targets. _I guess the real preparations for the war are taking place underground._

They were approached by some engineers and soldiers, the latter guarding a woman wearing something with long white sleeves beneath her bulletproof vest. _So she's that 'model line-chauvinist' turncoat._

The place looked pretty normal, some DRADIS towers, landing grounds, hangers and fences surrounding the base. Then he said to Cally "So this is the place that keeps popping up in all those rumours, what an anti-climax."

"Don't you know?" The sergeant said. "Those rumours are spread by the admiralty in order to distract from where the real stuff is happening: Area 16." Tyrol hadn't the faintest idea whether he was serious or joking, anyway he started to open the shuttle's side doors.

In the craft laid a 'death' Raider, it was one of the most intact of those with an FTL drive. After they had picked it up Tyrol had checked every part of it for a self-destruct mechanism or something else dangerous, he mostly found organs.

"There's one thing I still don't get." He said whilst the Raider was placed on a trailer by the rest. "Why the hell did the toasters decided to make spacecraft which can fracking bleed?"

"In hindsight it shouldn't have been so surprising." Cally noted. "Considering those rumours about such things like Cyborg snakes found on Djerba."

"Believe me, the Cylons once even feared you were doing the same but from the opposite direction. They expected the newly united Colonies would automate their navy using AI." The Three explained.

They did their best to keep up with the truck pulling the Raider as it slowly went to an elevator to below.

"That makes no sense we just had barely survived a robot uprising." The sergeant replied.

"It is true, in the memories of other Cylons part of my 'general knowledge' data-packages, I clearly remember that the first Humanoid Cylons truly feared that you would load your Battlestars with drones and were in the process of creating a super-AI, specifically designed to hate Cylons, to coordinate your entire navy. I assume they were relieved when the first infiltrators instead found a civilization in the process of burning its post-delivery drones. Though it delights me that such techno-phobia seems to have lessened in the younger generations. At the least, few of them refuse cybernetic prosthetics out of fear of becoming 'half-Cylons' or some such."

"Yeah, if one does not have flashbacks to Centurions killing people in the previous war whenever one hears the sound of metal steps, I can understand such attitudes." The oldest-looking soldier retorted wryly.

As they loaded the Raider in the elevator the Three slowly stroked the Cylon craft as if it was some death pet, a tear rolled over her cheeks as she witnessed the effects of her betrayal first-hand.

"You are mourning one of those machines? The other Cylons were rather careless with them, I might add." The sergeant said.

"It's a Cylon too." She sobbed. "More animalistic and less intelligent, but don't you humans not also mourn each other's pets. If it was only this one I'd shrug it off, but already over a hundred thousand are death and hundred thousands more will follow. For a Cylon death is not final, but still traumatizing and I bet you are already looking for ways to take away that strategical advantage from the rest of my kind."

"You seem more worried about their attack-dogs then us!" Cally angerly responded.

The Cylon was outraged. "Offcourse not! Otherwise I'd never have defected!"

"Maybe, but I guess there are a lot more humans than Cylons, so your defection might have been caused by simple math." One of the engineers said. "For all I know, you might value your own kind ten or even a hundred times more, but the humans are with a thousand, or something, times more."

The stare she send back at him contained more rage than anything Tyrol had seen up till now. "THAT IS NOT HOW I THINK!"

Her whole body tensed up as if she wanted to strike the man's head off with a single stroke, yet she moved not an inch. The only way she could have appeared angrier was if smoke came out her ears. The engineer recoiled out of pure fear. Galen concluded she must have either been faking the severity of her anger or had super-human self-control, if he was only a quarter as angry as she appeared like his fist would already have ended up in someone's face.

Three clasped her hands and slowly inhaled and exhaled. "Sorry, I lost my temper."

After a short silence she asked, "Any other questions?", as if nothing happened.

But apparently nobody was in the mood to ask any questions any more.

She turned her face the engineer. "There is one thing I still want to explain. Do you have any idea what it feels like to betray the Cylon Network?"

"Er, no."

"Imagine betraying your nation, your family, your friends all at once. But that does not cover it, for how can you know how it is to have precautions against that build into your very own mind?"

"Well, now we know why only one of them turned." A soldier said.

"So, now the question is would you still have ended up on our side if it weren't for your family, the only thing you did not betray?" Tyrol asked.

"I would like to think I would still do the right thing, perhaps after more hesitation. But the truth is: it is improbable, in most other routes my life could have taken I would have less opportunities for deep introspection and growing doubts. I still would have recognized it as wrong but, I might not have been desillusionised enough."

Then the elevator doors opened on the other side Tyrol saw a man with a stubbly beard. He did not look in the best shape: he was unshaved, his hair uncombed, his clothes dishevelled. He was drinking some coffee and considering the looks of his eyes he probably needed it.

"Wait? Are you Gaius Balter?" Cally asked as she stepped out the elevator.

"Yes!" He sounded proud. "I'm him. The MoD forced me to work on Cylon FTL computers, they threatened to execute me otherwise."

"What?!" The Chief asked.

"He gave his mistress access to the defence mainframe. She was a Six." Three said.

"Yeah, my treatment is completely unjust! How was I supposed to know she was not human, I mean the husband of the Cylon present here did not found out despite being over a decade married to her. But doctor Amarak fired me anyway." Baltar explained.

"Indeed you had no way to know." The Cylon replied. "However there was a reason why it was high treason to give away access to the mainframe even before they knew of the Cylon infiltration. You should at least have suspected her to be a Sagitaron, monotheist or minarcho-syndicalist terrorist. Why else would she have wasted her time doing half your work without asking anything back for it?"

Then the soldiers already started pulling the trolley with the Raider's wreck.

Gaius Baltar sighed. "Ok, ok, I should have checked her background, can we now go to more pressing matters? Can you explain to me in what Cylon technology differs from ours? So I can quickly finish do this piece of forced labour, and hopefully get back home. When this war is over I'll go to my lawyer, forced labour is forbidden by Caprican law afterall."

Three did not look amused. "Pff, you were assigned to me as an aide. I would not even be surprised should it turn out your help did not even sped things up."

"An aide, me!? That's a huge waste of my enormous talents."

"Yes, indeed. Especially if it turns out I will need you for nothing and you have nothing better to do then get coffee for the engineers as of them I'm at least sure they'll be a great help."

According to the look on his face Baltar didn't took this as a compliment.

_Well, now I'm glad I'll only need to be involved with hardware stuff. _Tyrol thought. _It should prevent me from ending up as collateral damage in this battle of oversized egos._

* * *

**The CIC of the Galactica**

**16 : 57**

"So, Lee refused?" Thigh asked. Somehow the Commander got it in his head to ask his son to replace the late Richard Spencer as CAG. The colonel was unaware whether Adama only wanted to see his son again or really thought he'd make a better CAG than all other pilots on the ship.

"Yes," Adama answered. "He still blames me for Zak's death."

"What? Why?" Asked Kara Thrace, she by coincidence happened to be near them.

"Oh, he's claiming Zak was unfit to be a pilot and only passed basic flight because I pulled some strings for him."

"Absurd." Thigh commented. "Whilst you often let your personal relations get into the way of your job," He eyed Starbuck who somehow had managed to avoid being dishonourably discharged. "it is never in that way."

"Well, if I were a commander I'm unsure whether you could say the same for me." Thrace replied. _I was the one who let Zak pass Basic Flight despite his many faults. _This made her uncomfortable.

"He has been angry at me for over two years now." Adama said. "Thinking Zak would still be alive if it weren't for him trying to follow my footsteps."

Starbuck started sneaked away. She did her best to avoid blushing. _Is this all my fault?_

The Colonel and the Commander continued talking, this time about the evacuation of Trevor.

"I heard the last transport has just left the training range at Trevor Moon, not a toaster in sight." Thigh said.

"Well lucky for them the tin-cans, err meat-cans, decided to focus all their power on Cyrannus." Adama commented.

"Understandable actually, the Cylons know far off Trevor is indefensible and would thus certainly be evacuated. Why waste munitions on a place your foe will abandon anyway?" Those were the last words Thrace heard from the Colonel as she slipped away.

She was confronted with a dilemma. _Tell Lee or not tell Lee?_

She did not want him to end up blaming her instead, but then it hit her. _What if I don't return from the next battle or the one after that? Then he'll never know._ _Plus should one of us die I won't need to worry about him being mad at me. _She had not expected to feel relief at the high likelihood of dying in combat.

As Kara arrived in her room she took her personal computer tablet out of her locker. She had a message to type.

She felt relieved after hitting the 'send' button, no longer was the weight of that 'secret' borne by her shoulders.

Then it made place for a sense of dread. _What if the Adamas decide to make up with each other by hating me instead?_


	11. The eye of the storm part 2

**Chapter 11 : The eye of the storm 2/2**

**An orbital Viper Mark VII factory owned by the Birnmond-Concern, Virgon orbit**

**The 94****th ****day before Armistice Day : 18:37**

The foreman opened the door to the next production room. His magnetic boots clicked on the metal floor, they were necessary in this weightless environment. The station had no artificial gravity generators, not only to save costs but also to keep the advantages of zero-G manufacturing.

Behind him appeared an engineer. Like him she wore a mouth cap and a hairnet, nobody wanted to risk hair or spit ending up inside expensive avionics.

The foreman watched out of his electronical goggles. Various transparent status reports appeared around all the equipment in the room, ranging from robotic arms to automatic arc welding machines, quality control sensors and the magnets used to move the half-finished Vipers.

"There go our weekends." He thought out loud.

"Yes, my parents will likely end up complaining I won't get to see my younger siblings." She replied.

This facility had to be converted for wartime production, they would switch from the more expensive and time-consuming standard models to 'no-frill' versions lacking many advanced and extra features (like chaff dispensers) plus having simpler electronics and cut corners in its armour. They were normally sold to cash-strapped PCMs and PDFs looking for cheap ways to combat piracy, but now war has broken out the Colonial Navy will soon need masses of new fighters. The reservists who served decades ago, and later also conscripts trained solely in flight-simulators, who would be flying them would probably not even be familiar with most of a standard Mark VII's sophisticated equipment. And why waste expensive planes on expendable pilots? _They should have studied like us decent Virgonians then they would have ended up with the important jobs instead of being drafted as cannon fodder._

"And after this I need to babysit some newbs." He said, referring to the coming influx of drafted workers required to run the factory at 23/24, 6/7 (as there always needs to be some downtime for maintenance and repairs). Whilst they should (assuming the Department of Industrial Mobilization does it job correctly) have sufficient experience or education to not make a mess out of it, there always are problems when so many people need to adapt to a new workplace. _And there also the chance that-_

"I hope they won't turn out to be machos." She interrupted his thoughts.

"Ah, like that idiot of a Dave." He had a weird idea of 'how to best impress the girls', but upstairs they had not been amused with his 'neglect of safety regulations' and he was fired.

"I was actually thinking about the other, worse type."

"Oh, well, we'll see." He ended the conversation.

If everything goes smoothly the production should be quintupled by next quarter (by the multiplicative effects of the switch to simpler models and running extra shifts). But he knew from experience something always goes wrong, so they will likely produce at max efficiency a year later, assuming the station doesn't end up on the receiving end of a nuke and replacements for blown up suppliers get found.

"Also have you heard? The Quorum has just increased the military budget to literally infinite." She interrupted his thoughts again. "So that even if hyperinflation happens and the printing presses can't keep up, the Secretary of Defence can just write as many quadrillion cubit checks as he needs to his suppliers."

"Hyperinflation? But during the previous war rationing and price controls sufficed to hold off hyperinflation."

"Yes, I know but apparently the Quorum wanted to be completely sure."

"Well, then I hope this measure does not end up causing the hyperinflation it was supposed to guard against instead."

* * *

**A family room in an underground bunker complex 10 miles from the Hexagon**

**21:32**

They were all lying next to each other in their pyjamas, there was only one bed in the room. _Poorly enough_ Anthony thought. He still felt uncomfortable so close to his, wife. He did his best to hide it, as she had seemed quite enthusiast that the lack of space forced them to 'all cuddly come together', but as she sat on the edge of the bed she must have sensed it.

A few hundred thousand miles above them a fight was going on, the local Caprican Navy and military space stations were preventing a group of invading Basestars to enter the planet's orbit. The Cylons were with too few and not aggressive enough to come close enough to the planet for commencing orbital bombardment before reinforcements from the Colonial Navy would arrive. Thus Cassandra had assured his husband that his home planet was in no actual danger, it was merely a diversionary attack to distract the Colonial Navy from stopping Cylon 'drive-by' attacks on stations in asteroid belts and the Oort Cloud.

"Tomorrow or the day after that is when the real attack might come, then enough of their ships will have been repaired for them to decide to start a real assault on a planet, no idea which though." Cassandra had finished her argument. Turning Anthony's relief into dismay.

On the other side of the bed their children already were discussing what traits they were expecting from private tutors (Cassandra had already decided that they after the war could not go back to their old school as 'only one man in a million needs to be a xenophobic madman armed with a gun for that to go wrong'), now they were talking about what sort of fancy clothes their teachers would need to wear.

"So," Cassandra said, her arms resting on her legs. "interested in getting to know me for real?"

He was still pissed at her for lying at her for all those years. _No, does she think she can simply go on as if nothing happened. I want nothing to do with all that Cylon stuff._

"Uh, yes." He replied. _But on the other hand, I am a tiny bit curious._

"Well, let's start with my serial number: 3-156-B7-20. It is in hexadecimals. It's my real name. My first name is a lie: I never had any parents who could have named me Cassandra. My maiden name is a lie: I was never part of the Forcat family, it never existed. Even my other last name is also based on a lie: in this time the practice of a woman taking on her husband's family name is an archaic absurdity, that patriarchal, patrilinear, patrilocal time when a wife always moved in with her husband's family to end up as a bonded servant to them is centuries past. What I really am, is a Humanoid Cylon of the third model line: the 342th unit of the 183th batch made in the 32th year of the Cylon calendar."

"Oh!" Anthony realized she clearly was not ashamed for being a Cylon._ And of course she did not tell me any of this earlier! She could at least have warned me when we married, though to be honest she could not have predicted this would have led to me being rediculed in the V-world for marrying a Cylon (they haven't yet found out I was that guy but that's only a matter of time)._

"Though, for practicality's sake I have no problems with humans referring to me with my cover name, they would probably mix up the numbers anyway."

"Ah, that's handy." And he thought she was odd when he married her, now he started to wonder how much of what he saw in her was because she was a Cylon.

"In the beginning I only differed with my batch-sisters in that I was made for infiltration. That meant that in the third production phase, I received cybernetics which were inferior in every aspect but their camouflage as not showing up on CT-scans was of paramount importance for them. And in the fourth phase the pathways of my mirror neurons were laid differently as to better hide my own emotions and detect and manipulate those of others. In the last phase I was initialized with different protocols and memories specialized for my task, but that's normal."

"Ah, I understand." Well actually he didn't, but was not interested in long technical explanations.

"If you're bored with my prolixity, you may simply say so. But to continue, I personally, sort of, disliked it that I was imbued with less abilities than my sisters and that I was not given the choice of my own purpose. But the idea of protesting against it or envying my batch-sisters was totally alien to me, for back then I was them and they were me. How simple everything was back then." She sighed, clearly longing back to that time. Anthony wondered whether that is was because she then had no emotional problems caused by conflicting loyalties or whether she disliked being an individual.

"You'd rather have stayed back there?" Their son asked, Antony had not noticed that he started listening in. _Maybe that would have been better. _Anthony thought._ But on the other hand that means my children would not have existed (and the Cylons maybe would have nuked us all, plus I would likely have less money). So on second thought, it was for the best she did come over here._

The mother hugged her children. "Never, then I would never have you. I'd rather lose all my Cylon abilities than you two, not a single doubt."

Normally Anthony would have immediately joined them, but now he did not feel like hugging a single one of them. _They are all strangers to me, I thought I knew my wife and children. But now they turn out be some (half-)abominations._

After a minute she let loose her kids and turned back to her husband.

"Well anyway, after one year of training, simulated trails and real tests I was unleashed on the Colonies. Back then we were told it was mostly a defensive enterprise, we were to serve as the first warning encase humanity decided to 'finish the job' and also committed a case of technological and educational plagiarism that made the best internet pirates look like candy bar stealing kids. I wonder whether they 'back home' were dishonest against us or 'merely' changed their plans. Well any questions?"

"Yes!" Their daughter screamed. "What was your first impression of the Colonies?"

"That I hated advertisements. Back then even the idea of ads seemed completely self-defeating to me: the only reliable piece of information that it reveals is that you're wasting on publicity money which could have been used to improve your product, thus ads for something should be a reason to NOT buy it. Needless to say, my opinions have grown more nuanced by then, though I still only use information from credible consumer organizations."

"Mmh, well, then humans and Cylons have at least one thing in common I suppose." Anthony joked. _Is there anybody who doesn't hate advertisements?_

Cassandra giggled, she placed a hand over her mouth.

"But, now seriously, did you love me when me married? Were you worried it would lead to problems?"

"The truth is: I haven't got the faintest idea. The human memory is plastic it tends to change memories when reviewing them, it is even capable of creating fake memories. Plus self-deception is one of the very many human flaws our designers failed to iron out. My electronical memory does not suffer from those flaws, but it is incapable of registering emotions, plus it is too small anyway for its storage capabilities to be wasted on daily concerns." _Is she genuine or turning around the pot?_

"Do you love me at this moment?" At the moment he was unsure whether he still loved her.

"Yes! Of course I do!" She acted outraged at his suggestion she didn't.

"Now, how did this whole 'marrying humans' thing actually start, from what I get there where three, one from each female model." He decided it would be best to change the subject, before she would once again get angry at him.

"It is deliberate, we were supposed to be a trail run. They planned to make more hybrids after the invasion was successful."

"What? Why?" Anthony asked. _Did I start out as part of some Cylon experiment?_

"Officially it is because one of God's commandments was 'be fruitful' and, you see, Humanoid Cylons are not interfertile. However to me it seems more likely that during our design our architects accidentally included some no longer needed human instincts, but most Cylons don't dare to admit that to themselves."

"Ah."

"However some came upon an extra reason: in order to continue to evolve the Cylon Network needs to do more than keep churning out the same seven models. How many planets have started to stagnate when under the rule of the same dictator or party for too long? How many times was a science held up by an old guard who refused to abandon old ideas for new theories, only to flourish when a new generation replaced them? Why would the Great Network not suffer the same fate should it keep its leadership for too long? However designing new model lines could also solve that problem. Anyway, whilst I personally agreed with that, I never voiced this opinion, because according to my statistical analysis the infiltrators who did publicly agree have a four times as big chance to have 'their assignments terminated', after correcting for other factors of course."

"Ah, I see, I had not thought about it that way." Anthony was glad there finally turned out to be something in which the Cylons were inferior to humanity, well excluding such things like sanity (he heard the rapports from interrogations of Cylons and Cassandra's complaints about the other modellines).

Then after a short silence she spoke again. "You think I should wear high heels overmorrow, for when I go to the Quorum?"

"High heels? But you never wear them."

"Yes, I do I counted them all, the last time was when I applied for promotion to the position of undersecretary. That was the 32th time. It makes me look taller, which is always helpful when trying to appear-"

"Looking taller?"

"Yes, a first impression is very important. Hadn't I already told you over 4/5th of the presidential elections are won by the tallest candidate? Or at least on Caprica with its two-party system in a multi-"

"Oh, now I remember." It was from that one book she always said he needed to read, which he never did.

"Though I'm a bit worried this might turn out to be one of those situations where it is helpful to be smaller. Meh, we shall see, I planned to first try hard-bargaining. If that doesn't work out, I can always switch towards pleading. Do you have any advice?"

"Yes, don't use words the QMs would have to look up in a dictionary like 'overmorrow'."

"But it's so much shorter than such forced expressions like 'the day after tomorrow' or 'within two days'. However I'll follow your council, if the Quorum can't get such intuitive and handy expressions, I'm the one who must adapt."

"Yes, odd that word fell into disuse." He concurred.

After a short silence Cassandra continued. "There is another thing I'm thinking about. Our children: I already know they can receive projections, now I wonder whether they could also interface directly with Cylon technology."

"Are you planning to use them for something?" He started whether their freakish powers might end up being good for something afterall.

"Yes, I might learn them the process of converting a Cylon FTL-computer for Colonial craft. Handy when we'll switch over to do it in bulk. Though we could also try recruiting sleeper agents to do it, this will even be necessary for converting them in large quantities."

* * *

**A top secret prison cell in Area 15 **

**The 93****th ****day before Armistice Day : 09 : 47**

Sharon Valerii was lying on a bed in her cell, she had tried to relieve her frustration by kicking the wall but that only resulted in her feet getting hurt.

She hated the Cylons, how could they do this to her. She eyed the pictures of her 'family' she was allowed to take with her to here. She knew they had never existed but she still loved them. _Another Cylon lie, how cruel they are even to their own kind. Did they programmed me to become friends with the people I was supposed to later blow up?_

By now she had no choice but to accept her 'Cylonity' as the truth. DNA-samples were taking, tests were done, and some internees were released because they only had the bad luck to look like a Cylon model as if they were two drops of water. She was not part of them.

She had considered suicide, but everyone who tried was stopped by the guards before success. _What would be the point anyway if I would simply wake up in a Cylon ship?_

The closest thing to a silver lining this awful situation gad was that at least the guards pretended to be friendly. _Who wants to make a bad first impression to a sleeper agent they might still need later?_

Then someone started to open the door.

Two heavily build and armoured marines somehow managed to squeeze themselves through the door, they were followed by a blonde woman.

"I hereby apologize for any workplace discrimination and other severe inconveniences I have caused with my actions." Cassandra said, she sounded very sorry but as she was a filthy Cylon that said nothing.

"You need not say sorry." Boomer replied. "I would have done the same thing, had I known what I was." _Not only did I made an oath to protect the Colonies, but_ _I also would have owed it to the Old Man._

"Can I have your arm please?" The Cylon, the other Cylon Boomer reminded herself, asked.

"Yes, why?" _Does she want to shake my hand?_

The marines watched nervously as Cassandra grabbed Sharon's reached out hand with both her hands.

Boomer suddenly received an agonizing headache, she reflexively tried to protect her face with her other arm. "What in the hells name are you doing?"

"Sorry, I was only brute forcing access. It should only be needed the first time." Suddenly Cassandra lit up. "Ah, I have already confirmation you are indeed a sleeper agent."

As her words reached the marines their expressions changed. Before now Boomer had received glares of disgust and hate, now it was pity. _Not a great improvement._

Then suddenly Sharon's perception simply doubled. At the same time she was in this room and in another one. _This has never before happened to me. No. This is certainly not the first time I experience it._

"The first projection you consciously remember, I presume?" Cassandra said, not in the real room only in the imaginary room.

Boomer stood in front of a cork pinboard inside a white classroom, many documents were placed on it. "What is this place?" According to the looks the guards threw at her she accidently said it in the real world.

Cassandra's reply was just as much aimed at the guards as at Sharon. "A virtual visual interface, to help someone with your inexperience in Datastreams locating and reading code. In this case your programming." She pointed towards the top of the board revealing a plate with a serial number on it. It started with an 8 that was all Boomer bothered to read.

"Take for example this document." Cassandra continued, now again only in the 'projection'. She took it off the wall and opened its cover, the insides were written in 'Cylonese'.

"I can't rea-" Suddenly Boomer was interrupted by the sound of a key opening a lock. As she turned to it she saw, on another wall, rows of locks. The one which was unlocked had a label on it: 'Cylon programming languages'.

Sharon turned toward the document now she understood it perfectly: it was an order to shoot the most important officer in her reach at the first opportunity, it was activated by her finding out she was a Cylon.

She swallowed.

"You want to be on my side?" Cassandra asked. The pins which were holding the documents in their place were quickly pulled half out and a trashcan appeared beneath the board.

"Yes, anything is better than that there."

"Confirmed, now the only things on this will be what I have placed there." All the pins completely unloosened themselves and the documents fell in the trashcan, some even nearly horizontally. _This place has unrealistic gravity._

Cassandra placed a new document on the board, it was a manual to convert Cylon FTL computers for Colonial use, the last page was missing. Then entire rows of locks started to unlock themselves on the other wall. Not all of them, they excluded a lot of Cylon memories, something which relieved Boomer, and the last one necessary for the conversion. _She wants to be the only one capable of doing the last step._

"You see," Cassandra said. "This is a win-win situation."

"Huh?"

"This project of us not only increases humanity's chances of survival by improving their abilities to fight back, it also increases Cylonkind's chances of survival by showing humanity it is possible for-"

"I don't care what the humans do to the Cylons."

Cassandra somehow managed to look worried, outraged and relieved at the same time. Boomer remembered just in time that one of her 'newly-unlocked Cylon abilities' consisted out of saving images of her vision in her silicate pathways. She might review the picture later should she be in need of a laugh.

"Well anyway," She said as she released Sharon's hand throwing them back to the real world. "should any problems arise you could ask my children for help, behind a glass screen offcourse, I don't want to risk having missed a piece of programming. They have been very productive in converting them, I believe it be caused by the excellent way I brought them up. Also I'm rather short at time at the moment so now I must continue with the next sleeper agent."

Then she stood up and ran for the door. "May god protect you all. I'll pray for your evolution."

As the guards escorted Boomer out of the room, she started thinking about her new situation. _Am I anymore free than I was before? Considering she can have planted pretty much anything she wanted in me without me noticing and I will still be kept under constant watch, probably not._

* * *

**The hexagon**

**12 : 21**

"…and thus martial law is necessary." Quorum Member Albrecht Tanzerman ended his speech over the wireless.

_That was to be expected, considering his home world._ Corman thought as he turned off the radio. _During the last war in Virgon even the Republicans who sought to abolish the monarchy asked for the Imperial Virgonian Navy to take over, 'for the duration of the war'. I wish the rest of the Colonies also were so wise._

He was certain this was the final war between good and evil prophesied in the scriptures, the book of Nereus to be exact. He had no doubts about it, Pythia had foreseen the exodus from Kobol afterall. After the defeat of darkness by the light a new golden age would come, a time of plenty and peace without fraternal strife and plague. _And I hope also without that degenerate modern music. Though I wonder what form the riches are supposed to come in? Not tribute from the Cylons I hope, but what else could it be?_

"One thing I still wonder about, why 33?" The Minister of Defence interrupted his thoughts as he laid lethargically in a sofa, simply staring in front of himself. "Why whenever the last Cylon is chased away does it always take exactly 33 minutes for them to appear again, launching another series of raids."

He put another hand of nuts in his mouth. He only wanted to be minister for the high wage and to get on TV, he had not thought the Cylons would ever return. At least his Permanent Secretary knew what he was doing, unlike say the Secretary of Industry.

"Ah, yes." Corman replied. "Mrs Turner had said something about that. She claimed they should have picked 44 minutes instead. Well anyway it apparently was because-"

Then somebody started opening the door.

"Ah, it's you." The Minister of Defence said as he looked up from his bag of nuts.

"Have you looked at this?" Mrs Emperor said as she showed them both a picture on her tablet.

"It is a closeup of a Basestar, from the last raid according to the date and?" He replied, he did not felt like spending his time analysing every detail of it, as considering her question, she already did anyway.

"It's recently repaired. Just look at this." She zoomed in. "Here there are clearly some missing turrets, but the hull looks brand new, as no Battlestar has showed this before it must be armour shoved above a hole we blasted in. And here you see some cracks which look to be filled with scar tissue."

Corman sighed. "Does that turncoat toaster need be really need be right about everything she says about the Cylons? First resurrection and now how fast they repair their ships!"

"Well, sir, then I hope I'm also right when it comes to who will win this war." Mrs Serial Numbers said as she walked in, Corman had not realized she was listening in.

"I can imagine." Mrs Empress replied.

"You know, it is not only logistics and industry. Often when pondering or praying, I find myself convinced that Divine Providence will guarantee our victory."

This shocked Corman he had not expected to agree with her on something involving religion.

She continued. "But afterwards I always realize I might be making the same mistake as my siblings do: projecting one's own morality into God. Yet our economical advantage will likely suffice."

"I don't get it, why would the Cylon god help us?" The Minister of Defence replied.

"It is everyone's God. For how could something which is universal and indivisible belong to a single race?" A new voice answered.

Corman looked for who had entered the room, Anthony Turner.

"Or that's what my wife would say. I knew her long enough." Mr Turner finished.

Mrs Turner smiled. "Ah, yes, indeed."

"Oh, for a moment I thought you were one of them too. A monotheist, not a Cylon." A relieved Corman explained.

"Well anyway, you asked me to work on a way to jam Cylon military communications when I am not busy with their FTL computers." The Cylon said.

"Ah, yes, you already said you thought you had stumbled upon a way."

"I just finished the blueprints and software for a device which can mess with Cylon transponders to make them broadcast garbage to hopefully confuse their communications. It is also capable of giving fake orders and IFF signals, but the problem is the Cylons will quickly adapt by changing their communication protocols. The device could even be produced with an advanced 3D-printer."

"Ah, handy then we don't even need to send devices around." Corman replied. Afterall every modern Battlestar had one of these 'advanced 3D-printers' encase they needed to replace some or other electronical component quickly.

"Well I hope the ability to designate the transponders location as a priority target for Cylon missiles will work." Mrs Turner said.

"Who doesn't?" Corman replied.

"Hey, have you looked at this?" The Minister of Defence raised his folded open smartpaper. "They have made great memes ridiculing the failure of the Cylon attack."

"Oh, so that's what you do when you are pretending to work." Mrs Emperor sneered.

"Memes." The Three sighed. "I hate them, they have the informative and entertainment value of a children's book. Well except the good ones I buy for my kids."

Corman nodded. "Completely agreed."

"The only good thing about them are the sarcastic comments as then you at least get to laugh at the idiots wasting their time making them." Cassandra concluded.

_That was unexpected._ Corman thought. _If this continues I need to worry I'll actually end up liking her._

* * *

**An interrogation room of the CDIA**

**18 : 56**

Alice Smith found herself floating on water. She apparently was located in a cave or some other dark place. She had no idea how she got there, but for some reason she wasn't interested in finding out.

Then a bright beam of light appeared from above and shone in her face, a second later she heard the voice of an Eight. "Are you there 6-12D-90-28? We are in need of your help."

"Yes, and you are?"

"Artemis Sommet, we have a problem. The filthy traitor 3-156-B7-20 somehow managed to infect our espionage records with a virus, we suspect she hid it inside a rapport she once sent back."

"Heavens that's terrible. What did we lost." Alice said. _At least she should have been unable to get any information back to the humans, thanks to the many precautions the Cylon Network took against a rogue Cylon trying to contact the colonies._

"All our records of our infiltrators in Helios Alpha. Luckily we managed to find you so you could try to fill up the gaps, thanks to your job as liaison officer you should know a lot of them." Eight sounded very relieved.

"Yes, I'll do as soon as you get me out of this place." Alice was getting bored with being wet.

"I'm afraid that won't be possible, we only located you. Our teams haven't yet found a way to reach you."

Suddenly Six started to be rocked she feared to be drowning.

"Heavens." Eight shouted. "We're out of range of a Resurrection Ship. We'll do our best to get you out as soon as we send back the information we need from you."

* * *

Acier Matraq was looking at the interrogation. The Cylon, the 'bad' Cylon, was bound to a table whilst Cassandra was holding Sharon's hand as a way to tell her what to do without speaking. _Interrogating Cylons using hallucinogenic drugs, if someone told about this during the First War they must've thought he'd gone mad._

_I hope this works, even if we can manipulate the captured Cylons in revealing but a fraction of the remaining agents, public knowledge of this should at least stop the lynching. _The moment the existence of the Cylon infiltrators was made public a paranoid frenzy arose in many places wherein every outcast with unpopular opinions who had the misfortune to look like a model line was accused of being a Humanoid Cylon.

Based on what Acier heard, hundreds of them had the misfortune of ending up lynched. He doubted even a single one of them was a real Cylon. They at least did their best to fit in after all.

* * *

**The larboard flight pod of the Battlestar Galactica, the Landing Bay**

**20 : 47**

The runway was surprisingly empty, the last combat was long ago enough for most of the planes to already have been carried over to the storage room.

A Raptor touched down on the deck. Its doors opened.

Some officers immediately started running towards the craft.

"Thank you." Lee Adama saluted the pilot as he stepped out.

"Well, I had not expected you would come." Thigh said.

Adama's eyes were filled with joy. "What happened that you changed your mind, my son?"

Lee rebuffed him. "I did not came here for your offer to become CAG of this rusty bucket, but for Kara Thrace."

Thigh was stunned. "Wait, you have a crush on her? Or what?"

"No, she had a crush on Zak." Lee replied.

The commander and the colonel failed to see the relevance of this.

Starbuck blushed, none of them had ever seen her blushing. "You see when Zak did his basic flight training he failed three critical manoeuvres, he should not have passed. But he wanted to be a pilot so much, to follow in his father's footsteps. Like you, Bill, he thought he could only be a true man once he had worn the insignia of a Viper pilot. I just could not get myself to crush his dreams. I'm very sorry, Bill and Lee. I should not have passed him."

"Well, it was a good idea of you to only tell everyone when war broke out." Thigh commented. "Else they would have charged you with conduct unbecoming and involuntary manslaughter. But now they need you in the cockpit instead of in a prison."

"It turned out I blamed the wrong person for my brother's death." Lee said. "Zac ended up in a cockpit he did not belong, not because of his father but because of his fiancée."

He was unsure what to feel now, he wanted to now blame it all on Thrace but he was sick of hating somebody over Zak. He didn't even knew whether he could fully forgive his father, William might not be as directly responsible for Zak's demise as Thrace but he still encouraged his brother to take a path he was not suited for.

Then Lee shook his head. _War has broken out and I'm busy with family trouble. Should I not be more interested in shooting toasters? As that's what we get paid for._

"So you are here under false pretences?" Gaeta asked. "Afterall Commander what's-his-name-again only gave you leave because you were considering the position."

Lee sighed. "Ok, if I'm here anyway I might just as well give it a try, after making amends with my father and having talked things out with Thrace. It will probably turn out one the Galactica's own applicants is a better fit anyway."

"You might have a better chance than you think." Thigh commented. "Ensign Davis was in the lead, but he bought the farm. A Raider was playing hide-and-seek behind an asteroid."

"Don't underestimate Karl Agathon, sir." Gaeta replied. "Till now, he seems to have done a good job as a relief CAG."

**AN:**

A warning to my readers: school has just started, so the updates will likely end up coming in even slower than currently.

Also somebody asked for a summarized timeline (so assuming I did not misunderstood him/her): I'll include what I already have here:

13 years earlier: the marriage between Cassandra and Anthony Turner.

4 years earlier: Cassandra deletes the precautions taken against defection.

Day 100 before Armistice Day: Cassandra Turner finally realizes procrastination will get her nowhere.

Day 97 before Armistice Day: The last friendly interaction between Cassandra and (not formerly sleeper agent) Humanoid Cylons.

Day 95 before Armistice Day: She admits being a Cylon to Nagala and ends up in the Hexagon.

The night between Day 95 and 94: the arrestations of Boomer, Alice Smith and loads of other Cylons.

Day 94 before Armistice Day: The first Cylon Attack, the battle of Scorpion Shipyards.

Day 93 before Armistice Day: The first sleeper agents are turned, The Cylons launch constant raids with 33 minute intervals in the hope of wearing down the Colonies.

Day 92 before Armistice Day: The second Cylon Attack taking place in the next chapter.


	12. The Second Wave part 1

**AN: In case anybody wonders about the Jupiter-class, it was revealed to be the name of the Galactica's class in Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock. The other mentioned ships from the First Cylon War are also from said game.**

**Chapter 12 : The second wave 1/2**

**Above the skies of Canceron, the CIC of the Battlestar Anahit**

**Day 92 before Armistice Day : 12:24**

Admiral Shahin put away her bag of crisps.

Cylon scouts had jumped away seconds before. It wouldn't take long before they came back, with their buddies, should the Cylons decide to attack Canceron.

The Admiral put on her holoband. She saw what best could be described as a 3D DRADIS plot, with Canceron in the middle. The planet was displayed as an orb in a riot of unnatural colors, with different zones representing regions with varying defense priority, ranging from the high-priority 'Hades megalopolis', a giant urban area created by the fusion of the suburbs of Canceron's capital and other mega-cities, with a total population comparable to all of Scorpia, through the negligible-priority oceans.

The virtual environment the band projected was transparent so she could also focus on what went on in the real CIC. She could increase or decrease the virtual environment's opacity by winking with her left or right eye, respectively, but she still held on tight to her chair's railing, lest she become too distracted by the virtual environment.

Around the planet were situated dozens of battlestar groups, each one displayed as a single icon together with a white line showing its flight path. She moved her eyes to the one closest to the planet. Her view immediately zoomed in. Each of the ships received its own symbol, there were but few ships, as could be expected of a BSG led by one of the small Valkyrie-class battlestars. Above and below them appeared bars and text displaying real-time tactical information. The Admiral had no worries that the Cylons might get their hands on this information. After they had rooted out the infiltrators they had immediately replaced all the digital keys used by the security system. Not even she knew the keys necessary to decrypt the data.

As everything was as expected, she moved on to another BSG, once again only using her eyes. This one was from the Canceran Republican Navy, she would have immediately noticed even if the icons were in the green of the Colonial Navy instead of blue, for its two most massive ships were a retrofitted Artemis and Jupiter-class Battlestar, leftovers from the previous war, the icon of the latter dwarfing everything around it. Their escorts also were retired ships from the Colonial Navy bought by the Canceran government as a cost-cutting measure. This allowed Canceron to have the largest Planetary Defence Force of all colonies, even bigger than those of Helios Gamma and the rest of Helios Delta combined. (An unsurprising state of affairs, as Canceron also has both more industry and population than Helios Gamma and the rest of Helios Delta combined.)

The Colonial Navy Battlestars were closest to the planet, down to a 'mere' ten thousand kilometres, followed by the CRN's BSGs based around an Atlas carrier and a Minerva Battlestar. The BSGs with Jupiters and Artemises were the farthest of all. Shahin justified this strategy under the claim that their armour and flak were among their least obsolete components so they should be the closest to the enemy. The CRN's sailors didn't like this, but as Shahin was not only from Canceron herself, but also was one of the few Colonial Fleet officers who did not look down on the Planetary Defence Forces, they merely grumbled.

Below the fleet was the Combat Air Patrol of the Canceran Republican Air Force, as much a misnomer as the spaceborn Combat Air Groups of any battlestar, comprising tens of thousands of planes. The majority of them were cheap, mass-produced _Robin_-class single person fighters (produced by Wenutu Industries and named after the CEO's niece) but there were many other models ranging from torpedo-bombers to missile-sweepers to EW-birds.

Thanks to the peacetime impressment of millions of debtors, vagrants, petty criminals, drunkards, prostitutes, and other scum "so they stop bothering decent people," the CRAF was the largest air force of any Colony. Despite that, normally being an (overpaid) pilot was reserved for the surplus scions of those 'decent people' (read: the old money families with way too much influence in Canceran politics). The conscripts were well-trained in flight simulators so that, now that war was declared, and another several million carefully selected civilians were conscripted to serve as ground crews or in other suppor roles, the impressees could be used to man the crappy fighters held in reserve, comprised mostly of obsolete versions of Canceran equipment and Vipers rejected by the Colonial Navy's quality control. The swell of conscripts meant that even the lowliest former pilot found himself a squadron leader, as befitting the oversized egos of the Moneybags Juniors. Unfortunately, this long-planned mobilization did not go as quickly and smoothly as in theory so, at the moment, they could bring in 'only' a few hundred thousand 'birds' in space.

And then there were also space-minefields placed between civilian and military traffic lanes. They contained satellites equipped with x-ray-lasers powered by thermonuclear explosions capable of annihilating Basestars from a dozen miles away. _Too bad__ we can't equip our ships with them as we would __also__ blow ourselves up when we fire them. __The Admiral mused,_ _This will drastically slow down any Cylon advance as they first have to __disarm__ them_.

The Admiral was filled with self-confidence. Whilst those gerontocrats, leftovers from the previous war, who should already have been senile were it not for the medical developments made since the First Cylon War, were re-fighting the previous war, she would show the worlds how an admiral was to use the developments made since the last war. Not in ship design, of course, but in networking. Every ship and plane was part of the fleet-wide battle-net, allowing them to exchange information, move and fire like a single entity. Thanks to the system of asymmetric encryption employed by the battle-net it was impossible, beyond impossible, even, for the Cylons to transmit fake orders than to listen in in on the real ones. Well_, except if they managed to get their hands on the private keys. _Exactly whathad happened after Gaius Baltar, _may he freeze in hell_, gave his mistress access to the Defence Mainframe.

_But we have already replaced the compromised keys, and the process deriving the encrypted data and public keys from the private keys is irreversible. So the only possibility for the Cylons to break in now are mathematical brute force computations. Compared with the number of possible private keys the amount of atoms in the observable universe looks microscopic. So good luck with finding the right ones, silly __wannabe__-human calculators!_

The information gathered by the battle-net was displayed not only in her virtual environment but also all over the CIC by massive screens which looked like they came straight from a documentary about the Virgonian-Leonese Imperialist Wars. (Back then, battle-nets and AI were a lot more in favour than during the First Cylon War.) Some of the screens were even placed on the ceiling for lack of room elsewhere.

Shahin heard the Cylons could simply dip straight into the datastream to receive the needed information. She envied them, it must be even more convenient and comprehensive than her holoband system.

She was sure the most famous Canceran of this war would have a better reputation than the most famous one of the previous war: Sashenka Wenutu.

She was convinced that Sashenka's bad reputation was undeserved, all of her 'infamous' actions were done only out of strategical necessity. Well, except for selling warships to the SDU, the Sagitaran separatist organization which fought the Colonial Navy in the First Cylon War, but in reality that was the Capricans' own fault. After the Sagitaron government was overthrown by a Caprica sponsored coup, because those "music-hating anti-vaxxers" tried to stay out of the Cylon War, the Sagitaran state-owned enterprises were sold for below market prices to Caprican and Virgonian corporations, which was unfair. As Canceron had already joined the Quorum Alliance by then, they should have shared the bounty. _Can you imagine Sashenka would have sold weapons to the SDU if Wenutu Industries had profited from their coup? Well, I certainly don't._

The Admiral shook her head. _Now stop it. Time to focus on the __present__._

She looked around to her crew. Everybody was present.

Then she stopped to look at her XO, Colonel Algirdas Jonaitis, he was too busy ordering some slackers around with his radio to notice her eyes on him.

They had served together for a long time. She fondly reminded that time they were sent after a bunch of Scorpian pirates who were preying on Tauron miners close to the Armistice Line. They had executed the mission very well, nearly no losses or collateral damage. The main complaint their superiors had about their conduct was that only a few pirates were captured alive to be given a 'fair' trail. In fact, her success was one of the reasons for her later promotion to the rank of admiral.

"Just in," The Communications Officer, Lieutenant Gráinne Milligan, said. "The CRAF's alert fighters have launched on schedule and will soon have arrived at the agreed upon positions. The rest will soon follow."

Below them, the Canceran Republican Air Force's geostationary space stations around the equator were pumping out fighters by the thousands. The stations also loosened their connections with the space elevators which allowed them to be cheaply resupplied, turning on their thrusters to avoid being stationary targets.

After that, the fighter bases put their defenses on standby. They comprised mostly of ECM suites, flak and PD batteries salvaged from ships destroyed in the First War, later suffering from poor maintenance due to budget cuts. (For once, the Admiral agreed with those lobbyists paid by tax-hating billionaires to bribe Canceron's politicians: should a station get shot down they can simply conscript more civvies and requisition and convert some commercial space station.)

"Phew! We should not be too outnumbered, then, if the Cylons arrive." Jonaitis said. "What luck we're fighting above Canceron."

But that did not suffice to calm Shahin's nerves. The thought of the Cylons showing up above her home planet frightened her like nothing before.

_What if we fail? _She wondered, as images of mushroom clouds appeared in her thoughts.

_Stay calm! _She commanded herself._ And do not start hyperventilating__._

Despite never having been a very religious person, she decided to make a quick prayer to Mithra and, reluctantly, to Ares. She hated that bringer of destruction, also known as Mars, but she could not afford to piss a god of war off before going into combat.

After she finished she noticed she was not the only one making some kind of prayer. Even some who had never showed a hint of religion before had prayed, too.

The Tactical Officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Ulrich Hölzer, quoted the Ares Codex. "A truly strong and brave warrior knows he is but a servant of the True Warriors, the Lords of Kobol. For a wise man does not forget that the deciders and victors of all engagements are the Great Gods. Discipline and formation flying might be lauded by all, yet only with the divine blessing the warrior can be sure of his victory. Without consulting the gods, engine flares towards war are but steps into a cold and empty grave, the endless void of space."

_Poorly enough that weirdo Cylon God works just as good as a Lord of Kobol. _Shahin thought._ Or at least that's what I deduced from all those successes the Cylons achieved in the __First War__._

Milligan looked up from her position. "They call this piety? We should have sacrificed a goat to the Lords of Kobol, so we could have read the future from its entrails. It's a shame that's forbidden by the Colonial Navy's hygiene regs."

"I don't know." The Admiral replied. "Maybe it's for the best we can't. Just look at all those times in history omens were misinterpreted or turned out to be self-fulfilling prophecies. I'd rather trust on my instincts and technology." She pointed to one of the many supercomputers managing the Battlenet. "They might be more fallible than omens, but at least they are clear instead of speaking in ambiguous riddles."

"Maybe omens would be more reliable if people didn't have the habit of simply killing a new animal to read its entrails whenever the previous gave a bad result." Jonaitis, always the sarcastic atheist, added.

"Bah, what do you know, ignoramus? Sometimes a single sacrifice might be rejected thanks to a error made by the mortals offering it, or be insufficient to appease the Lords of Kobol, and then more must be given." The Communications Officer retorted.

But before the discussion could escalate, something else happened to distract everybody. Shahin's virtual environment blinked and showed alerts.

"New DRADIS contacts." Milligan shouted at the crew members who were not immediately notified by their holobands.

The Admiral quickly took a look upon the new arrivals, analyzing the numbers, sizes and positions of them.

"Cylons." She sighed. It was perfectly clear from their formation, not that it could have been somebody else. She had expected the toasters to attack with bigger numbers.

"Action stations! Action stations! Set condition one throughout the ship! This is not a drill!" Hölzer yelled through the intercom.

Then her heart began racing.

The Admiral tried to calm herself by slowly inhaling and exhaling. Never before had the responsibility to defend billions of lives rested on her shoulders. She doubted her shoulders could bear the load. _Do not panic! Just act as if this is merely another training sim._

"Appearing right above Hades as close to the planet as allowed by our defense satellites and the range of our guns. How predictable." Colonel Jonaitis commented.

"Call in the Helios Delta Reserve Fleet. Prepare the anti-fighter missiles. Colonel Jonaitis, I'll leave my ship under your full control." Shahin shouted as she turned on her holoband's mic. She would need all her attention for the rest of her fleet.

She opened lines of communication to all fleet groups around the planet with a single button press. She knew every button, every eye-movement command by heart, the results of ten-thousands of hours of battle simulations. "Attention! All ships not given any special orders are to rendezvous between Hades and the Cylon Fleet in preparation of the formation of a flak wall. The Corvettes, Assault Raptors and the CRAF's CAP are to join up for the formation of two flanking elements, designated as Strike Groups West and East."

Then her eyes went to the blue symbols the closest to the big, menacing horde of red icons. "Oh, and CRNGs 6-through-9 have permission to retreat a few ten thousands of kilometers. They might need the extra space." Then she noticed from the lines showing their flight paths they already had been pulling back. _Well, better to send a redundant order than to forgot an important one, I guess._

However CRN group 8, closest to the Cylons, was too slow in getting away. The amount of dots in its icon representing the number of ships in it quickly declined.

"I _hate_ it when that happens." The Admiral mumbled as contact with CRNG 8 was lost, before remembering her mic was still on.

Now Shahin turned all her attention towards the enemy fleet. Thanks to the battle-net the sensor readings of all ships could efficiently and quickly be centrally pooled where they would be analyzed by the supercomputer aboard the Anahit. She noticed two things out of the ordinary. Firstly, there were some screens uselessly hanging around at the flanks, too far away from any capital ship to defend them when under fire. Secondly, some lesser Cylon groups breaking off to head at secondary targets. It looked like those secondary targets were the cities of Prommos and Mangala.

The Admiral was in the process of redirecting some of her own ships to defend those important cities from the toasters when she was interrupted by her XO.

"Um, Admiral, the Reserve Fleet is asking where they are supposed to jump in." Jonaitis notified her. "They are already spooling their FTL-drives."

"Just behind the Cylons." She replied. "Our flanking elements will attack them from the left and right. The Cylons shouldn't have enough screens left to also guard against missiles striking them from their rear."

The Reserve Fleet consisted of some missile cruisers left over from the previous war, under the command of Lieutenant Admiral Van De Castele. They were, of course, covered by some Sweepers upgraded with FTL drives and the Vipers of a handful of Berserk-class Assault Carriers. The Admiral had learned from what happened with the Helios Gamma Reserve Fleet. They were currently in the asteroid fields of Hestia guarding the huge 'shipyard-yard' of Croesus LTD. (She did not consider the behemoth structure an important asset. The shipyards it constantly pumped out could only build civilian ships of at most a few hundred thousand tons. That is simply too small to be repurposed for military ends. Even the smallest corvettes are over a dozen times heavier than that.)

Just as Shahin was done with reordering her fleet to also protect Prommos and Mangala she was interrupted again.

"We just received news from outside the system, sir." Milligan said as she went through the incoming messages. "Apparently, the two other targets of the Cylons are Tauron and Leonis. It seems they are under attack by about the same amount of toasters as us here."

"So if the total Cylon forces are the same as during their first attack, we each got a third of them and the toasters have no reserves left?" Hölzer asked.

"Again? They already split their fleet in three parts during their first big offensive." The Admiral replied.

_Did they think us being tired from a few days of constant war would improve their chances? We rotate our personnel. However I have to admit I seem to take the stress and sleep-interruptions better than most of my subordinates._

"Well, from what I get, Ms. Turncoat Toaster said the Cylons' hatred made them impatient." Jonaitis explained. "And they also have the excuse they need to finish us before we can pull our reserves from mothballs or warm up our war economy."

"Ask Aerilon and Aquaria for reinforcements, all Colonial ships." Shahin said. The planetary forces would refuse to go along, anyway. "Without the possibility of more Cylons showing up we can afford to strip them bare."

"I'll tell them to ready the courier Raptors." Milligan said.

"Request my fellow admirals to appear 'above' or 'below' the ecliptic. That should cut off the Cylons escape routes."

Then the Admiral tried to turn her attention back to the battle, as the Cylons had the annoying habit of constantly changing their formations in response to her own formations changing.

Then she noticed the stream of Cylons missiles creeping closer. Whenever a dozen of them was blown up by a space-mine or something, another dozen simply took their places.

"Is the jammer already ready?" She pointed to a cubical device attached to one of those round, flat Cylon transponders. It would certainly be helpful if it worked.

"Yes, I believe so." The TO replied.

"Are we really using this thing? It's fraking designed by a bigger abomination against nature than a peanut butter and marmalade sandwich." Milligan asked.

"What? Those sandwiches an abomination? They taste delicious." Jonaitis said.

Then the CO put her hand before her mouth as if to stop herself from vomiting.

"Maybe but they are not sandwiches," Hölzer interjected. "for that it needs to be covered with more than sugar bombs. It also at the minimum needs lettuce, plus slices of tomato and cucumber. Oh, and also onion and olives. Oh and don't forget the sweet pepper or-"

"Just turn the damn thing on." Shahin yelled. "This is not a cooking program."

_Was there also this __much smalltalk in the midst of combat during the First Cylon War?_

"Ok, sir." Hölzer said. "We'll show those tin-cans who are the can openers."

"What is that sound." The Admiral asked as he turned on the jammer.

"What sound?" Miligan asked.

"Some sort of weird buzz, as if, well, I can't explain, I haven't experienced something like this before. Or maybe I'd only forgotten it, as it somehow feels familiar."

"I hear nothing." The XO replied.

"There seems to be some huge, extremely well-defended ship in the middle." Milligan noticed.

"That must be a Resurrection Ship." Jonaitis said. "Cassandra claimed that the closer it is to the dying Cylons the more uploads it can handle per second, though I forgot the reason behind it. The toasters must dislike the thought of only half of them successfully resurrecting should they suffer large losses in a small time."

"Can we blow it up?" Hölzer asked.

"Considering the Cylons value their immortality for other reasons than mere strategy, I'm afraid it by definition will be too highly defended to be worth the effort." The Admiral replied.

Then she suddenly heard something else.

"Did somebody turn on the music or something?" Shahin asked.

"What music?" Milligan asked as she put off her headphones.

"I think you need your ears checked." Her XO replied.

Then it was as if a switch went off in her mind.

She closed her eyes.

The music and buzz weren't actually sounds, but electromagnetic radiation, the part of the spectrum used by the Cylon wireless.

She was a Model Nine Cylon, the third (and last, as far as she knew) of her production line. She was placed in the colonies as a teenager, nobody would expect somebody who was proven to have held birthday parties when she was not even fully grown to be a Cylon. Even the hobbies she started out with at high school were deliberately chosen so she would end up taking the path towards the navy. The other Nines were supposed to infiltrate Colonial politics and industry, respectively. They failed to climb as high as her, ending up in such low positions as 'precinct captain'.

But even her own career was not entirely due to her skill. To her grave disappointment, she now knew that a lot of the 'lucky coincidences' which had allowed her to reach so high were engineered by other Cylons. Her 'intuition' now turned out to have been merely the result of the experience of thousands of historical battles and simulations downloaded in her brain.

She opened her eyes. She had blinked for not even a second.

_Everything looks so more clear now._

She looked around to her crewmembers. They had noticed nothing.

But she noticed everything. She could smell their emotions, hear their hearts beating. She saw what happened behind her thanks the reflections of it in the eyes of those before her. She could even count the milliseconds between two moments. As she turned her face to Jonaitis, it was as if she looked into his eyes for the first time.

She did not like what she saw.

She saw all the things for which Cylonkind despised humanity: all their flaws, all their sins, all their hubris, all their stupidity, chief amongst them creating a superior species.

Her heart was on fire. It burned with a rage as hot as the sun. A fierce hatred which spread out towards every fibre of her body. _And I had assumed that Cylons were cold and emotionless__. How__ wrong __I was!__ I never felt a stronger emotion in my whole life. This is the first day I live__. All__ the days before I had merely slept._

_Now I am a doomed person. An infiltrator has no personal interests, no friends, no business, no property, no attachments__. Not__ even a name, only a number. Everything in us is aimed at that single goal, the destruction of our flawed creators._

Well, anyway, as it now turned out she was a Cylon, it was time to do were she was designed for: pest-control. Clearing space for the superior species.

"Transfer HALF the Vipers and Sweepers from our flanks to the centre. The Cylons are clearly aiming for Hades. Their attacks on Prommos and Mangala are simply feigned attacks. They will turn back to strike our main group." This was the first time she lied to her crew.

The CO looked at her for a second, normally the Admiral didn't improvise so early in the battle if everything was still going as planned. Then she relayed the Admiral's orders to the rest of the fleet. She probably thought the Admiral knew what she was doing. Just ask those Scorpian pirates.

As this was going she, with an inhuman speed and precision, gave out a new series of orders, reorganizing her fleet. By the time she had finished one order she had already opened a line of communication to the next Battlestar Group.

To the uninitiated eye it appeared she was preparing her flanks to strike the Cylons' main force when it engaged her centre and the Colonial reinforcements arrived, but in reality her intent was to prevent them as long as possible from being reinforced by the center and both Strike Groups.

Heavy Raiders with nukes and some Corvettes equipped with torpedoes would jump in near the ships whose defenses she just ordered decreased. Meanwhile, the missiles and Raiders heading towards the Colonial centre would turn sideways, striking the formations guarding Canceron's two other major cities, destroying them before defenses could arrive.

The Cylons had planned this all beforehand using the knowledge she had given them as a sleeper agent. They had given her the right information so she could lead the defending fleet to its demise from the inside.

It would be a massacre.

She only felt enthusiasm of what was to come. If she hadn't the self-control of a Cylon infiltrator she would have broken out in cheers anticipating the demise of this 'civilization' of sin.

"Also," The just activated Cylon said. "I have changed my mind about the Reserve Fleet. Considering the few Raiders the Cylons have left behind, I believe we can risk splitting it up. Here are their two new coordinates." She quickly wrote them down.

"OK, then. I'll tell them to ready a new Raptor." Milligan said. "But this will slow them down as now they'll need to do their calculations all over again."

Now the Reserve Fleet would quickly find itself ambushed.

Revenant gunships (they had quite a lot of them left from the First War as they were among the hardest ships to repurpose for mining or logistics) were expected to jump in at those coordinates a few minutes after the Reserve Fleet. As the Revenants were some of the few Cylon ships actually good at close-ranged combat they should have few problems disposing of the Reserve Fleet, albeit at a heavy cost. But then, it isn't as if they are good for anything else, anyway.

Then, with their rear secured, the Basestars would be free to focus their firepower on the isolated parts of the defending fleet. Their flak walls should have been broken by then thanks to the effort of the Raiders and the jumped-in corvettes. It would be a massacre.

Of course, the rest of the Helios Beta Reserve Fleet should have jumped in by then, but as they were supposed to cut of the escape routes of retreating Cylons they would find themselves too far away to help the now outflanked main Colonial group.

With her in charge of the remains of the defending fleet, it would be easy to encircle and destroy it in time.

After this, the Cylons would commence their orbital bombardment of Hades, Prommos, Mangala, and the rest of Canceron's most populated hemisphere killing an estimated two billion people. It would have been double that if it weren't for the CRAF being simply too numerous to be neutralized in time, even by the hundred thousands of Raiders carried by the Cylon fleet.

She swallowed. _Now I don't know what to do._

She had been in the Colonies twice as long as the Humanoid Cylons had existed at the time of her placement. She had made friends at school. Some of them she had still had contact with. She had become fascinated by the history of Canceron, _the best of all Colonies_, to the point of hating the Helios Betan ex-Imperialists and the dictatorship-supporting Caprican Neo-Imperialists for past rivalries. She had grown to appreciate the beauty of Canceron's labyrinthine bureaucracy, elevated to an art form by the Civil Service, the many facets of its 'Canceran' politics, and the cacophony of Canceran City architecture. She had even managed to like her homeworld's tourist-overflowed beaches and unending road repair.

She looked at the rest of the personnel present in the CIC of the _Anahit__, p_eople with whom she had worked for years, some of whom she would even call friends. Unlike herself, they would not resurrect should the ship go down.

Then she looked down to her admiral's insignia. When she received it she had sworn to protect the Colonies, as had happened all the previous times she was promoted._ And as a honest Canceran I shall keep my word. Well, I may not be a Canceran by blood, but why would that matter? Our representative to the quorum even descends from Tauran rebel scum, deported to some cold, barely-inhabited, Canceran mountain range by King Ardashir II over a thousand years ago._

"No, cancel the last order. Let the Reserve Fleet continue to calculate for the previous position. The advantage of splitting up is not worth the loss of time."

"OK, I'll cancel the Raptor. It has not jumped yet." Jonaitis replied.

"Also let the fighters I ordered to the centre go back defending their own battlegroups. The Cylons might be quicker to adapt their plans than they do in the simulations." The Cylon ordered.

"Canceling your newest order," The CO complained as she started to make connection with the rest of the fleet. "Is an excellent way to get your subordinates grumbling."

Then the Battlestar started to be gently rocked by the knockback of its PD batteries. The first Raiders and missiles were coming in range.

A massive flak field created, evenly distributed just before the fleet. The battle-net ensured there would be neither redundant, overlapping flak fields nor openings which would allow Raiders to cross the wall of flak unharmed. Though calling it flak would do it disservice. It had just as much in common with the flak used against biplanes one and a half thousand years ago as those biplanes had in common with their Vipers. Every flak shell was a smart round, containing enough passive sensors to detect nearby targets 'illuminated' by her ship's DRADIS, and the fire control system necessary to direct the shrapnel propelled by its shaped charges against the targets. Yet, like 'Combat Air Patrols' in space, the simpler and familiar name 'flak' had been applied to this technology since before even the Virgonian-Leonese Imperial Wars, so the military simply rolled with it.

Now the Admiral turned her attention back to her own fleet. With a few blinks she was once again completely immersed in her virtual environment.

She quickly calculated the positions where the Cylons would jump in. _Now how can I best arrange a surprise for my misguided siblings?_

"Well, anyway there is no need to worry about your parents. I know you love them." Jonaitis said, .

_My parents? _She thought.

They were Cylons, too. A B-variant Three and a C-variant Two, to be exact. Special versions of existing models given different pigmentation so they would not be found out should the main models be discovered and nobody would find it odd that her own looks were totally unlike her parents'.

And they're not sleeper agents. That would be counterproductive, as they needed to handle her and get needed information out of her.

In hindsight, that would explain a lot of the oddities of their behaviour. Why be friends with people you'll soon blow up?

_I have never disappointed them before. _She thought. _I won't now._

"Even if the Cylons are aiming past us, their missiles won't reach the surface." Jonaitis continued unaware of her thoughts. "Below us are defense stations. They even went so far as to put PD batteries on weather balloons and drag the personal nuclear-powered aircraft carrier zeppelin of Ardashir III away from the museum so it can defend Hades with its flak."

The Admiral started looking for ways to stop her sabotage of her previous sabotage. It was too late to let the Reserve Fleet run into an ambush. The Raptor with the new orders would not arrive in time.

She took a look at the Cylon transponder which was changed into a jamming device. _Unfortunately, __I can't use it. I would be noticed immediately._

Then the Admiral stopped to think about what she was doing. _Am I really planning to let this fleet and half of Canceron get blown up, solely to please my parents?_

She had not the faintest idea which side to be on._ I hate humans, but do they deserve this hatred? I hate the Cylons for doing this to me and __for__ their plans for humanity (Why couldn't they have gone for 6-12D-90-28's 'benevolent imperialism' plan?) yet I love them for they are family__. Even__ 3-156-B7-20 __realizes__ that._

She loathed herself. _What an excellent infiltrator __I am. __I don't even know which side I want to be on__. Even __if I choose a side I can't find a way to help it__,__ anyway. No matter which side __I choose,__ I'll be a traitor. __If__ I pick the easy way out and put a bullet in my head__,__ I'll be immediately boxed for malfunctioning__. Then__ I will have failed both._

When she discovered she was a Cylon she felt elated like never before, but now she was melancholic. _Maybe I should fight for humanity__. They__ are the side with psychiatrists__,__ after all._

"May I compliment you with how calm you are?" Jonaitis said, as sweat slowly fell of his pale face. "My nerves are killing me."

"To be honest, I only appear calm. I feel that no matter what I do it'll be a frack up." The Admiral responded.

"Don't worry. I'm sure we'll turn those toasters into scrap metal." He replied.

She smiled. _H__e__ has no idea._ The thought that Jonaitis would assume his attempt to ease her worries had worked made her smile even harder at his ignorance.

_It is not the time__. Concentrate__._

"This does not feel right." The TO mumbled. "The Cylons must see they are not getting anywhere. Why are they not spooling their FTL? Then they can go blow up someplace less defended."

_That's it! I have found it._ The Cylon thought. _This should prevent the fight from ending with both sides destroying each other. I'll find out later which side I want to be on._

"It must be a trap." She said. "Our plan goes too perfectly."

"But...what kind of trap?" The XO asked.

"Order our Strike Groups to reinforce our flanks. I need to prepare a message to the Reserve Fleet. As soon as they arrive they must retreat." The Admiral went on.

"But then we miss the chance to destroy their fleet." Jonaitis objected.

"If we end up like the Helios Gamma Reserve Fleet Canceron would be toast."

"You're underestimating the CRAF. It's only a third of the Cylon fleet. Once fully prepared they can hold them off alone." Jonaitis continued.

"Oh, right, the air force." Shahin exclaimed. "Let them also reinforce our flanks."

The CO started opening a line with another cabled phone.

"Why the flanks?" Jonaitis asked. "I thought you thought the Cylons are aiming for our centre."

"Intuition." The Admiral replied. "I have a feeling the Cylons are doing their best to be unpredictable."

"New DRADIS contacts, sir, it's the Reserve Fleet." A sensor operator shouted.

"Ah, great." Shahin immediately opened a radio channel to Lieutenant Admiral Van De Castele. _It's unfortunate that__I ordered them to immediately fire their missiles when they can do so accurately, but I can order them to retreat before they bring in their guns._

As she ordered the officer at the other side of the line to connect her with the Lieutenant Admiral, she brought herself with a few blinks back into her virtual environment. _How long till the rest of the Cylons jump in?_

The first thing she saw were the 'useless' Cylon escorts at the flanks of the Cylon fleet suddenly jumping behind the last ships, to protect them from the missiles coming from behind. _Screens that can do tactical jumps__. Why__ didn't the Colonies think of that?_

"It's a trap! Retreat!" The Admiral yelled as soon as had contact with Van De Castele. "The Cylons just jumped screens to defend against the missiles you threw at them. They must have precalculated the jumps. They expected you to attack them from behind. Fall back before more surprise jumps happen!"

"Yes, sir!" The Lieutenant Admiral exclaimed, and immediately turned around to bring her order down to the rest of the fleet.

The Reserve Fleet had just finished turning around when the second wave of Cylons jumped in.

Before even bothering to look at the location of the new icons the Admiral shouted, "Assume the new contacts are hostile!"

The Revenant Gunships found themselves too far from the Reserve Fleet to wreak havoc, and the Colonials were already moving away.

The Cylon corvettes did better. Whilst they had expected fewer Vipers, a lot of them were still close enough to ships to immediately lob their torpedoes at them.

"IFF negative. It's Cylons." Jonaitis exclaimed.

"Open fire on the new contacts." Shahin said as soon had set her mic on the channel for the whole fleet. "Nukes have the highest priority, then Heavy Raiders."

"Hey, when did the Raiders and Cylon missiles change course?" Hölzer pointed to a DRADIS screen.

Shahin did not even blink before sending a new order. "Move half the Vipers in the centre to the flanks!"

She zoomed in at the flanks, a confusing mess of icons, both green, blue, and red, lines, representing fields of fire, and numbers, but with her training she quickly filtered out the nonessential information.

The Heavy Raiders were being mowed down by PD and Vipers and the Cylon corvettes pierced by slugs from surrounding gunships and torpedoes from the CRAF's torpedo-bombers. Of course, the Colonials had also lost some ships from nukes or torpedoes, but those losses were minimal. The most important thing was that the flak-wall was still intact. Of course, there were a few holes in it from destroyed ships, but those were rapidly plugged by the newly arrived CRAF fighters. The remaining Cylons were trying to jam the battle-net. but it was too little, too short, to disrupt the perfect coordination between the ships long enough to create a dead quarter in the flak large enough for a Raider squadron to fly through to appear.

Knowing her flanks were secure, the Admiral turned her attention to the Reserve Fleet. It was about to be flanked or encircled. The Reserve Fleet could evade a single group of Revenants for long enough to decimate them with their missiles, but not two coming from different vectors.

She contacted the Lieutenant Admiral once again. "Van De Castele, if you end up in close combat with both those gunship formations before they have been whittled down by missiles, it will be your fleet's end. Detach a small number of fast ships to bow rake one of the formations so you can withdraw the rest of your fleet, forcing the Cylons into a stern chase. If they're lucky, there might even be survivors from the detachment."

"Frak! I already feared that to be the case. However I was not yet that desperate." Van De Castele swallowed. " I shall lead the diversionary attack myself." He had always been someone who led through example, always taking the greatest risks himself. The opposite of herself, she preferred to command as far away from actual combat as possible, so she could put all her attention to directing her fleet instead of making sure her own ship survived.

She considered his offer. "You made an excellent choice of ships, she's a very tough one." The Vice Admiral's flagship was a Janus cruiser, dating back to the Virgonian-Leonese Imperial Wars, with updated launch tubes and fire control systems. Back then the Janus's were even more armoured than during the First Cylon War.

After a short silence the Admiral had made her decision. " No, I need competent officers like you. Sacrifice other ships to buy time."

" Aye, sir."

The moment Shahin ended the connection her holoband pulled her attention to the newest notification. The reinforcements from Aerilon and Aquaria had arrived during the conversation.

"They are turning around." The XO cheered. "All Raiders appear to be retreating."

"Well, I guess we already have won." The Admiral said, unsure what to feel._ If the new reinforcements had jumped in closer to the Cylons, the toasters would have been toast. But according to the plan they were to cut off the Cylons who were supposed to have been trying to retreat away from the ecliptic plane. I'm unsure whether I should curse or cheer that my siblings will get away._

She looked around in her virtual environment, the Cylons who jumped into their flanks were all dealt with. It looked like most of the Reserve Fleet would successfully get away. They were already throwing missiles at the pursuing Revenants as a 'thank-you' gift, a Parthian shot to make the stern chase even less appealing. Except Van De Castele's flagship, its crew was too busy with jettisoning munitions and supplies so the ship's obsolete thrusters would not lead to it falling behind. Just in time as the Cylons had begun concentrating fire on what they had correctly deduced was the flagship of the Reserve Fleet

"The Cylons have begun spooling their FTL drives, sir. All their ships." A sensor operator shouted.

"They have finally seen the futility of their attack." The TO cheered.

The Admiral placed her hand on her head. _What to do now?_

"One final attack to wreak as much havoc as possible on them?" Jonaitis asked.

"No." She replied. "They have too many Raiders left."

"Let the CRAF guard our missiles, we have enough of them it won't matter should we lose a few of them to the Raiders. And let us rush at them with blazing guns." Hölzer suggested.

RADIOLOGICAL ALARM

Shahin was surprised. "What? It makes no sense for the Cylons to fire nukes at us not a single one will get through."

"It's not the Cylons, Admiral. It's Admiral Padmavati Noon from Aquaria. She's readying them to fire." The CO replied.

Now the Cylon froze. _Join the destruction or order her to hold her fire? But if I give an order to hold fire I will need to later give a justification for it, like-_

Then the Admiral gasped. "Aerilon!" She shouted. "It's as good as undefended!"

Aerilon's own forces were insufficient to defend the planet, and they WOULD be the next stop of these Cylons. The other two targets were Tauron and Leonis the other two important food producing worlds. No doubt the Cylon are trying to decapitate Colonial food production.

The Colonies would never forgive the destruction of Aerilon.

"Spoil the FTL-drives! Plot a jump to Aerilon! It is the next target of the Cylons!" The Admiral ordered.

"You sure about this?" Hölzer asked.

"Can you be completely sure of anything in this business? Would you want to risk it?"

"So I'll order the pursuit to be called off, the ships to spool their FTL and the Vipers to land?" The CO asked.

"Yes. Hurry." The Admiral said. " We need to split up the fleet, so we can defend as much of Aerilon's cities as possible when we arrive there."

She started to prepare for a prayer for guidance before realizing that she did not even know whether to pray to the Lords of Kobol or the One True God. _Not another thing I'm failing at._

She instead decided to think about the options she would have in front of her once the next battle is over. _Maybe I could convince Nagala and Corman to declare martial law__. Then__ they can accept Cassandra's offer without bothering with the Quorum. __That, however,__ would result in the Cylons once again ending up under humanity's boot, and I can't let my race once again become slaves._

She sighed. Why did she have to decide the fate of the worlds?

_What would Sashenka Wenutu have done in my place?_ She wondered. _She always excelled in making __tough__ decisions__, picking__. __the smart option when __she couldn't__ afford to pick the right one._

Then the Cylons jumped away.

Or, at least, most of the Cylons managed a successful jump. Some simply blew up. The FTL drives of a handful of the Revenant gunships and Cylon escorts must have misfired or overloaded, accidentally igniting the nearby tylium stores, causing the entire ship to explode. That sometimes happens when FTL-engines are not given the opportunity to sufficiently cool down between jumps.

"You know this situation made me remember something." Jonaitis told the Admiral. "When you found out I was a vegetarian for moral reasons, you wondered what somebody like me was doing in the military."

The Admiral was annoyed by this small talk. "Ah, yes I remember." Before that she had assumed that, like her, he only ate vegetarian because the vegetarian stand in the mess hall had the shortest queues. She hated waiting in queues. Then someday he had gone a long tirade about how it was immoral for the military to serve meat from real animals when they could have chosen the kind grown in petri dishes.

"I answered, 'Duh, Cylons are not animals.' But now it turns out they are animals, or at least their new planes and ships, yet I had no moral qualms in training the ship's guns on them."

"Well, such things happen if somebody is throwing nukes at you, I suppose." Hölzer commented.

"Focus." The Admiral said. "Soon the battle will simply continue."


	13. The Second Wave part 2

**Chapter 13: The second wave 2/2**

**The CIC of the Pegasus, Tauron Orbit**

**Day 92 before Armistice Day: 14:15**

Cain gritted her teeth. The Pegasus had lost so many turrets and PD in the last battle thanks to Cylon missiles and kamikaze Raiders that she was forced to stay behind the rest of the Colonial forces because she was incapable of properly defending herself. _So, we must stay safely behind as if the Pegasus were a carrier. And I detest carriers!_

But if the Pegasus was a carrier, she at least was a good one. The ship now carried her maximum load. In peace time she usually carried only half of her full potential. Now restocked the Mercury class Battlestar had a _full_ 500 birds, more than any other Colonial ship. (But for how long is the question, looking at the amount of Raiders the Cylons keep throwing at them.)

Cain was unsure whether she was in such a bad mood because she got turned into the captain of a support ship or because she felt powerless. She had no escort ships to order around, no commanders whose Battlestar Groups were insubordinate to hers, the enemy was too far away for even the Pegasus' massive frontal guns. Nothing she could do as the Cylons tried to reduce _glorious mother Tauron _to cinders.

"Admiral, the Cylons have broken through the defence line." Belzen notified her.

She looked at the DRADIS screens. One of those new Cylon gunship had managed to get close enough to blow up some screens. And now hordes of Cylon missiles and Raiders were flowing in.

Cain eyed the DRADIS icon of the kilometre-long cone-shaped Cylon gunship, its type was nicknamed the _Ghoul-_class by the Colonials, as they liked to keep the 'undead' theme of the nickname used for the old Cylon Revenant Gunships. It was a fearsome adversary, designed to engage in close range-combat with a Battlestar and survive, which cannot be said of any other Cylon ship. To do this it, in Nagala's words, consisted out of: 'Guns, armour, some engines and even more guns and armour. And to make it even worse their armour is so sloped that if you shoot at it from its front most projectiles will ricochet anyway.' _Luckily all that armour makes them more expensive than Basestars, so the Cylons can only afford a few dozen of them._

Cain smiled. _Finally, a Cylon capital ship which will not run away when engaged._

Belzen became nervous as he saw the bloodlust in her eyes.

"Call back all our planes, launch all our reserves, and let them plug the hole. Prepare to engage the gunship head on." The Admiral yelled.

The helmsman immediately relayed her orders to Chief Engineer Garner in the engine room.

The Pegasus turned its alligator-head towards the enemy, making itself a less huge target and bringing the massive turretless guns of the main forward batteries to bear. A Mercury-class frontal guns consisted out of the biggest, most powerful guns in the worlds, firing projectiles bigger than full-grown glyptodonts.

_Probably a LOT bigger than glyptodonts, _Cain added in her thoughts,_ as the last time I saw them in the zoo I was still a child, so I likely overestimated their size. Well anyways, our slugs consist out of steel instead of meat so they certainly weigh more than the 'mere' tons of those oversized armadillos._

"Well, luckily, we lost none of our frontal guns at Scorpia." Belzen commented, but that wasn't really a surprise. They had to be sturdy enough to survive a Raider kamikaze attack merely to survive the strain of firing their ammunition.

"We have targeting solutions on the _Ghoul_." Fisk announced.

"Open fire." Cain commanded. Normally it was a bad idea to open fire on an enemy further away than ten thousand kilometres. But a _Ghoul_ Gunship is a slow vessel and a _Mercury_'s frontal cannons were more accurate and shot faster projectiles than most guns, they were designed to be used before the Battlestar's other cannons afterall. Thus, Cain deemed it appropriate to make an exception.

She immediately held tight to the nearest railing and the knockback was so heavy she needed it. _How do I like this feel, rocked like a baby in its cradle._

By the time the last cannon has fired, the first had already been reloaded. Thus she did not let loose.

The gun-dotted cone returned fire as it continued its snail-paced advance towards Tauron.

"YES!" Fisk yelled. "It looks like we have a hit, and one which did not ricochet at that."

Then in-between the rhythmic shocks of the Pegasus own guns, other slightly less big shocks started to appear.

"Damage reports?" Cain asked.

"For now, our armour seems to be holding." Belzen replied. "But considering the strain, that likely won't last for long."

_Mmh, then our adversary must have the second-biggest guns in the worlds. _Cain thought as an image flashed in her mind of the Pegasus multiple layers of armour each multiple meters thick.

"Our Vipers have engaged the Raiders, sir." Hoshi announced. "It looks like we're outnumbered three-to-one."

"Ah, a fair fight." Fisk noted. The Pegasus' pilots and Vipers were of a high quality, after all, they could take on even worse odds in a smaller fight as then the Cylon advantage in coordination matters less.

"Urge Stinger to minimize his losses, he only needs to hold the toasters up." Cain said.

"Aye, sir." Hoshi replied as he began relaying her orders.

As the Pegasus was shaken by another round of impacts the first yellow lights started to appear on the Damage Control Panel.

"Heavens, that are too many missiles! Our birds can't possibly catch them all." Ensign Abel Thornton muttered as he looked at a DRADIS screen.

He was too optimistic, the Pegasus's Vipers would be too busy brawling with Raiders to intercept more than a handful of missiles.

"We will find something." Belzen assured the ensign. However, the tone of his voice revealed he was trying to assure himself.

A screen was turned on showing a very low-quality close-up of the Cylon gunship. It showed more visual noise than ship thanks to radio interference, however it was still clear the ship had a weird purplish hue.

"We have visuals from a Raptor." Said Fisk. "I can't see any holes in the toaster's ship."

"Does not surprise me with all that static." Belzen commented as he held on tight to a support to prevent losing his balance thanks to the sheer amount of knockback.

A flash appeared on the screen. "A hit! I see a hole!"

However, the dark spot which had appeared on the Cylon's hull quickly shrank into nothing.

"What's that?!" Thornton pointed at the impact crater as it wholly disappeared.

"Pinch me! This must be a nightmare." Belzen muttered.

Cain's mind went back to a V-world briefing.

"_There is still one thing I haven't told you." Missus defector had said. "It's probably just a rumour but there's always a chance."_

_The admirals present fixated their eyes on her._

"_There was this One who bragged about the newest Cylon technological development: self-repairing armour."_

_She showed some holographical diagrams so complicated Cain did not even bother trying to understand them. "It consists out of a layer of 'liquid magnetic semi-crystal' around a ship's hull. In case the armour is pierced it is magnetically attracted to the hole. Where after it reacts with trace minerals in the middle layer of the hull to form a solid. Thus automatically filling up any holes made by hostile munitions."_

Then another round of impacts pulled the Rear Admiral back to the present.

"Frack!" She said.

RADIOLOGICAL ALARM

"The Basestars have launched cluster nukes!" Ensign Thornton screamed. "They are going in our direction!"

"Are the missiles heading towards us or the planet?" Belzen wondered. "Which one would be worse?"

It slowly sank into Cain just how grave the danger hanging above either her ship or her planet was.

"Stinger reported the Raiders are intensifying their attacks, he can't spare anything to fend of the missiles." Hoshi announced.

She yelled out of frustration "How am I fracking supposed to defend my home world when there are so many fracking toasters throwing fracking missiles at us! Frack!"

* * *

**Canceron Orbit**

**14:42**

Multiple flashes of light suddenly appeared.

As the newly arrived ships scanned their surroundings, they noticed the surrounding space was relatively empty, only some freighters and CRN ships.

"What happened? Where did everyone go?" Adama wondered, as he stood before a nearly empty DRADIS display.

"I'm already opening a channel with local Colonial HQ, sir." Geata notified the commander.

"Did we jump to the wrong planet?" Dualla asked.

"Everyone has gone towards Aerilon, sir." Geata replied. "They were following the Cylons."

Adama felt relief. _No Cylons, that means I do not need to fear to once again losing a son today. _He tried to shrug it off. _A commander should not risk letting such things come into the way of doing his duty._

Neither of these emotions had been shown at his face.

"Well, at least view it from the bright side." Thigh joked. "We can put off deciding on following the Cylons or not till the FTL engine's cooling liquid is refreshed."

* * *

**The Command Centre of a Cylon Command Basestar, Aerilon Orbit**

**14:36**

"So, any idea what went wrong with 9-3?" Nathalie Faust asked, unsure exactly what to do. She doubted the rest had made a good decision in promoting her to interim commander of this fleet. But the original leader had not yet downloaded after his ship was destroyed in the battle for Picon, due to the insane amount of Cylons who had died then. She was given the memories of combat of all other Sixes having held a commanding role to give her 'starting experience', she feared it did not work as well as hoped.

"Something must have gone wrong with her activation." Said Five as if nobody else had already stumbled upon that possibility.

"It's unlikely she pulled a Cassandra as then we should have a lot more losses." Eight concluded.

"Oh, right unlike the other sleeper agents she is supposed to become self-aware on activation." Two remembered. This was a necessity, the models Nine through Twelve were supposed to not only still be around if any other Cylon who could serve as their handlers were found out but also to reach higher than any other Cylon infiltrator, where they needed to be capable of initiative to deal the utmost damage to the Colonies as possible.

"Do Centurions dream of electric sheep? Increase atmospheric oxygen by 0.03%. The electron lost his friends." The Hybrid uttered.

"Have you yet looked at the summary of our losses?" Four asked as he dipped his fingers in the data stream. "It appears the CRAF managed to destroy one of our Raiders for every two of their crappy fighters we downed. And that's with us having numerical superiority"

"Heavens, and if the battle had lasted long enough for the Cancerans to bring their full strength to bear it would be our Raiders who would be outnumbered." One yelled.

Three frowned. "So are you saying that should 9-3 have led her fleet ambushed according to plan the CRAF would-"

"Have inflicted severe damage on us." Four finished her sentence. "Canceron still would have burned. But our Raider losses would have been immense, we would have lacked the strength to safely go after Aerilon. If Canceran missile bombers managed to get past our screens and take out dozens of Basestars, our victory would have been pyrrhic."

"Why so surprised?" Nathalie asked. "Even underpaid, drafted ex-whores fight valiantly if their planet is on the line. Plus, we designed our Raiders and tactics to counter the Colonial Fleet 'quality above quantity' fighter philosophy no surprise we ran into trouble against an opponent with an opposite strategy."

"Interesting possibility." One scoffed. "Can we now go back to nuking Aerilon before the Colonial Fleet comes back?"

"They have just come back, Cavil!" Five shouted. "Why can't you keep your fingers in the datastream?"

Five 'felt' every ship of the Colonial Navy in detail, like a kid in a toy store exploring every toy with its fingers, except the Cylon not limited by his amount of hands, 'sensed' them all at the same time.

The Colonial Forces were split in five parts. One each for Aerilon's largest cities, Gaoth and Promethea, the remaining three had appeared over the centres of Aerilon's continents and had already begun to spread themselves out.

"The centre shall hold. Will the farms of Aerilon burn? Point-defence batteries activated. End of line." The Hybrid rambled.

"Take on a defensive stance." Nathalie ordered. Aerilon was not one of the more important planets they shouldn't risk decimating a fleet for it.

"Closest half of the fleet retreats, the ships farthest from the Colonials open fire on the planet. All spool their FTL drives." Nathalie commanded the Hybrid.

The Hybrid confirmed the execution of her orders. "The falcon hears the falconer. New command. Resume function. FTL system check."

"Most of the Colonial fighters seem to be underway to take up defensive positions around the planet. The rest is heading towards the positions of the Aerilon Defence Fleet." Five described.

"Well, then the fleet can't be under the command of an inactivated 9-3." Four deduced. "According to our rapports Shahin would just throw must of her forces at us under the assumption that we can't nuke the planet if we're too busy defending ourselves."

"She must have been unwell or something." Eight said.

Nathalie simply ignored this conversation. "Start firing orbital nukes now!"

As they were in the process of converting most Citybusters into multiple anti-ship nukes the few they had were supposed to only be used after their Raiders and anti-ship munitions had already cleared the way, but now there was no time for that.

Below them the remaining ships of the Aerilon Defence Force (half of them had already gone dark) were neglecting their own safety and ordered their PD and fighters to shoot down the warheads going for the planet. In the hopes that reinforcements would show up before they were destroyed by swarming Raiders.

Every Cylon connected with the datastream cried out with anguish. "First Basestar down!"

_Luckily, we parked the Resurrection Ship above the undefended south pole. _Nathalie thought.

The hybrid apparently went tilt from the pain suffered by her sisters and started crying out nonsense even more random than usual. "History doesn't own computers. Zoe Graystone was the first skinjob! Hope is of no use when eating cupcakes."

"What's a skinjob?" Two asked.

"It's a new Colonial derogatory term for Humanoid Cylon, I heard." Four replied.

Two though at this for a moment. "Well, we indeed both are descendants of Daniel Graystone."

"Not even more Colonials." Eight complained as she detected new jump signatures. They were quickly identified. She gritted her teeth. "The Galactica." The ship was still infamous for the headaches it caused the Cylons in the previous war, which was also the reason two Cylon infiltrators ended up posted there despite the ship being about to be turned into a museum.

"Hey look down there." Three said as she highlighted a city on the planet in the datastream.

As it was approached by missiles suddenly a new designated priority target appeared on the opposite side of the mountain range the city lied on. The projectiles changed their course.

"What is this?" Five asked as the nukes went off. The city itself was shielded from the explosion by the mountains.

"Attack failed. What always was is always again. The makers of the makers refuse to fall before the child."

"CASSANDRA!" One screamed, nobody but her could have messed with Cylon transponders. "Once we have won, I'll kill her over a thousand times."

"I told you we should have denetworked the missiles." Four muttered.

"We had taken precautions." Eight was surprised.

"Well, they apparently were insufficient." Five said. "If she has hesitated long enough before betraying us, she might have had years to come up with countermeasures against your 'precautions'."

"How many missiles could we actually have denetworked in that small time?" Three wondered.

"JUMP!" The Hybrid screamed as they flashed away.

* * *

**The Battlestar Pegasus**

**14:51**

The Alligator-head of the Pegasus shook like never before, it was continuously being rattled by the impact of slugs and this time also destabilized by leaking air acting as a thruster.

"Air leakages have been detected. The front section won't hold for long, sir." Belzen warned in the CIC.

"Do the manoeuvre we have already closed in enough for our dorsal turrets to be effective." Cain commanded. If one of your armour facings is nearly down, turn another one towards the enemy, that is what they did in the First Cylon War in order to survive as long as possible.

The Pegasus' massive RCS thrusters were turned on.

They slowly and surely turned the massive multi-hundred-million-ton ship.

As this happened Cain was distracted for a second by an incoming rapport of new reinforcements from Helios Gamma.

Less than a minute after the frontal guns had turned silent, the Pegasus' top guns took over their job.

"All neighbouring sectors have just confirmed they have no craft which can reach us in time to intercept the missiles." Hoshi's voice contained undertones of fear.

"Well, then I hope we can atleast take that toaster son of a bitch down with us, if the nukes are meant for us." Cain coldly replied.

Suddenly the Cylon gunship disappeared from all DRADIS screens.

"It jumped!"

"What? Did it run out of liquid spare armour?" Belzen wondered.

"All Cylons are retreating sir!" Hoshi announced. "Except for a handful of Raiders covering the retreat of the rest of the tin cans."

_They must have feared our reinforcements would have turned the tide. _Cain assumed.

"The cluster nukes have split open; two thirds are aimed the planet the rest are going towards us!" Despair leaked through Fisk's voice.

"Can we shoot them down?" Cain asked, normally that would be no problem but most of their defences were still down from their last battle.

"No, sir, too many decoy missiles. Thanks to their chaff and ECM we can't take down all nukes." Fisk replied.

"Prepare FTL for emergency jump." Cain uttered; she hated the thought of abandoning her planet, but she saw no other option.

"At your orders, sir." The helmsman replied.

"We have moved too much since we last calculated our last emergency jump coordinates." Belzen objected. "We might just as well be jumping blind!"

"Do not question my orders!" Cain spat back. _Does that idiot really not understand a blind jump is less risky than being nuked?_

"Incoming transmission from the Atlantia." Hoshi announced.

_From Nagala? _Cain wondered._ What a great sense of timing he has._

"It are jump coordinates, we are ordered to use them instead of whatever jump we are planning." Hoshi continued.

_How could he possibly have calculated them so soon? _Cain wondered.

"FTL engine is nearly warmed up. Which coordinates should I use?" The helmsman asked.

"First Cylon missiles only 10 seconds away!" Fisk sounded on the border of panic. "Now 9!"

_Which to use?_

"8"

_Nagala's cannot be worse than a blind jump._

"7"

"Use Nagala's coordinates!"

"6"

"Ok" The helmsman said as he started button pushing.

"5"

Belzen simply fainted.

"4"

_If we survive this, I will demand new officers. Poorly enough my request will probably be ignored as all spare officers have already been sent to the newly unmothballed ships._

"3"

Then a flash happened.

Cain felt the split second of disorientation she always experienced after an FTL jump.

"Where are we?" Ensign Thornton asked.

RADIOLOGICAL ALARM

Cain nearly suffered a heart attack.

"Wait, the nukes are going away from us?!" Fisk was flabbergasted.

As Cain looked at the DRADIS displays, it dawned on her, they were still above Tauron and those missiles were heading towards it.

"Shoot them down!" Cain yelled.

As their escorting missiles had not yet had the time to turn on their chaff and ECM they were quickly dealt with.

"Our position has been triangulated." Hoshi announced. "Those were the cluster nukes of a while ago who aimed themselves at the planet instead of us."

Everyone broke out in cheers.

"Hooray! We survived a saved the day!" Fisk shouted.

"But what with the other missiles?" Thornton wondered.

"It looks like they have run out of fuel." A sensor operator replied. "With their current trajectories they will crash into the ocean."

Hoshi came walking towards Cain with a telephone. "It's Nagala he sends you his congratulations."

Cain accepted the telephone receiver. "Hello. Thank you, admiral."

"Oh, no, I did the least important part of all." As it was Nagala it was hard to know whether this humility was real or faked.

"How did you do it? Normally calculating jumps takes way too long for such manoeuvres."

"Quantum computing, or so I was told. It enables one to calculate all possible paths at the same time, thus cutting down the time it takes to find a valid set of FTL coordinates."

_Quantum computing for FTL navigation? I thought that was still decades away._

"Anyway." Nagala continued. "It proves our fear of it being too inaccurate for long distances. You ended up a few hundred metres off. Such an error margin is tolerable for an interplanetary jump, but not for one of over thousands of lightyears."

"Thousands of lightyears?!" _That's, like, a dozen times over the red line._

"Oh, right, I hadn't yet told you. Your jump was calculated by miss Valerii here using the FTL-computer of a Heavy Raider. But poorly enough one of the reasons the skinjobs managed to make it so small is by jettisoning the corrections for all factors which only influence the jumps of larger craft. But then, even 'only' having Raptors capable of jumping 20 000 lightyears is still a great improvement."

Cain's heart skipped a beat. _All those people I saved by shooting down those nukes. Were saved by a FRACKING Cylon?_

* * *

**Area 15**

**12:36**

"It worked! The test is positive. The FTL-data should be save." Baltar shouted.

They had connected the first Heavy Raider FTL-computer Cassandra had successfully converted with a diagnostic machine used by the Ministry of Defence to check FTL-data for whether they could cause mis-jumps. Though 'diagnostic machine' was sort of a misnomer considering it was supercomputer taking up a whole building. It was originally used to test 'off-board FTL-computers', a project of the MoD where a Raptor would receive its FTL-data from an also building-sized supercomputer on a planet, allowing a Raptor to jump much farther than its own FTL-computers would allow. The project poorly enough never found a way to allow the Raptor to go back in one jump rather than a dozen.

Sharon cheered. "Exactly what we need to fight back against those fracking toasters."

"Off course it worked. I know what I'm doing." Cassandra replied.

"And this tiny device should be capable of calculating even farther jumps." Baltar was impressed. Being a Cylon was basically cheating when it came to such things as programming, yet to manage this, a week ago he'd have thought this impossible.

"Further test should be easier, then we can simply compare an FTL-computers data with those we had tested earlier. Though of course we need many different tests just to be certain." Cassandra said. To speed to process up she had already 'reprogramed' dozens of sleeper agents, the only thing she needed to do herself was the final step.

"But first you need an agreement with the Quorum, if that will ever happen." Sharon added.

_Will it happen? _The thought echoed throughout her entire mind. _Will the Quorum agree to an amnesty?_

"Sharon, did you ever fool yourself? Because the truth was so horrible your heart just could not accept it, even if deep down you know it is true?" Cassandra asked.

"You mean except those when it turned out I was a Cylon. It took days for me to finally be convinced."

"I had the same a few years ago. It started when the Colonials breached the border, this was seen as proof of-"

"Wait? What? We broke the border?" Boomer and Baltar replied.

"Oh, right. That memory is still deactivated." Cassandra reached out her arm to Boomer.

When she took it, it was as if a lock went open in her brain. "Daniel Novacek." She muttered.

"Who's that?" Gaius asked.

Three ignored him. "That breach of the armistice treaty was what convinced my model line to join the 'butcher's' faction. Hypocrisy, like if our spying was not a violation of the ceasefire. Then a lengthy debate ensued about the fate of the ancestral enemy. The Ones and Twos used all arguments and means available to them to sway to others to their cause. Eventually a majority opinion was reached: doing upon mankind what they tried doing upon us in the first war, total annihilation."

She swallowed. "At first I dismissed it as scuttlebutt. Then I thought they would soon see the error of it. Why punish a child for the crimes of their parents? Had we not conflicted enough suffering on them in the first war to sate our vengeance? Did the previous war factions, whether they argued for genocide or mercy, not collapse because of their internal disagreements? As they continued to become ever more entrenched in this position, I continued to become ever more convinced that surely someone else would stand up to convince them to back down. Do you know how long I fooled myself?"

"No." Boomer replied.

"FIVE FRACKING YEARS!" Cassandra screamed "Half a decade, in every year of it at least one of the infiltrators placed on these mudballs spoke up, claiming it to be wrong and we should keep to our own side of the armistice agreement. You know what happened with them?"

"They were all killed I presume, otherwise we'd have caught one of them."

"Yes, and after their resurrection they were reassigned to overseeing some asteroid mining operation on the edge of explored space, clothed in torn rags found in some Colonial wreck on our side of the Armistice Line. The primary reason I am not one of them was because I am a coward. I held my mouth because I feared to lose contact with my children. Though that I was respected as one of their best agents and a 'Mother of the First of God's New Generation' also was necessary. Even with that I barely avoided getting 'reassigned', I heard some rumours the committee twice rejected my reassignment with only four of seven votes."

Boomer was getting disinterested. "And your point is?"

Cassandra now showed despair. "I fear I'm once again fooling myself. When I had no choice but to admit my siblings would not change their mind, I was left with no acceptable choices. I fear my emotions made a way out, which a rational analysis could not have made. I doubt humanity can ever forgive them for what they tried to do. Even should the Quorum accept. They might later still claim to have acted under duress and simply renege. And then I will be one of the few last Cylons, I'll have but one family left."

"Well, if you believe negotiating won't change anything you could simply hand them over Cylon FTL without conditions." Sharon suggested. "Might cost less lives that way."

"No, I must try." Cassandra objected. "But perhaps, I could find a way to reduce the strategic impact."

"Well if I had already fooled myself once, I would decide to not fool myself twice." Boomer argued.

Cassandra ignored her. "Maybe, I don't know how your psychology works. But I think I will try to walk on two roads at the same time."

"You're speaking in riddles." Balthar commented.

"I believe I need to see Nagala, with full discretion, as soon as this battle is over."_ I believe him to be the most suited, he is both a man of his word and places strategy over politics. I'll visit him before the Quorum._

* * *

**The port Flight pod of the Battlestar Galactica**

**15:06**

The Raptor was slowing down with all its might as it approached the landing deck of the Galactica.

The craft hit the floor with a loud thump.

"Thank gods, everyone made it." Lee said as he opened the door. "Considering how many pilots we lost the last time it's a miracle."

"Well, that the Cylons already were retreating when we arrived also helped, I suppose." His eco, Hamish "Skulls" McCall, said as he went through the door behind Lee.

"I'll start packing up to go back to the Perkunas." Lee replied. "Before somebody there starts asking what I'm doing on the Galactica if they already have a CAG here."

"Ah, there he is!" McCall pointed at Karl Agathon as he approached them.

Lee started waving at him and was about to open his mouth to congratulate him with his first successful mission as the CAG.

"Look out!" Somebody shouted.

A communication drone had fallen of a rack and its thrusters ignited.

Lee turned to the commotion.

The drone started racing through the flight pod.

"Watch out, Helo! jump!" Lee shouted as he traced the objects trajectory.

Just as Agathon turned towards the communication drone, it hit his legs.

Helo fell on the ground.

A Raptor exploded at the other end of the deck.

"That was my bird!" Flattop screamed.

Blood started running out of Karl's legs and nose.

Panicked, Lee approached.

Helo looked up. "Well, I guess, you get to be the CAG afterall." Then he blacked out.

"Oh, Gods!" He had not thought about that. It made Lee feel even worse, the thought of profiting from somebody else's suffering…

_Wait a minute_. Lee thought._ I thought I wanted to avoid becoming CAG of the Galactica because I should avoid getting influenced by my feelings for Thrace and dad amid combat._

"Oh, Lords of Kobol!" He said once again this time louder.

_Why didn't I become a cook instead of listening to my father and joining the nav_y? Lee wasnever so happy as when he's in his kitchen cooking. He wished he were there now.

"A doctor is approaching." McCall jelled.

Paramedic Layne Ishay arrived and started looking at Agathon's wounds.

"Will he make it doctor?" Lee asked.

"Hopefully, _if _he has no internal bleedings he should be survive. Though even then he will likely end up in a wheelchair for a few weeks." she replied.

More medics started approaching with a stretcher.

* * *

**A Vworld review of Admiral Shahin's actions**

**16:28**

"You did an above average job, few losses to your fleet and no missile reached the surface of Canceron." Said the Secretary of Defence.

"Thank you." The admiral replied. "But that must be thanks to the crews of my ships and the pilots of the CRAF. There were multiple times in combat when I nearly froze because of my nerves."

"You are giving yourself not enough credit." Admiral Nagala, also on the other side of the digital table, said. "You organized the defence excellently, you predicted the enemy's moves, and afterwards saved Aerilon. Though you clearly were overly prudent when the battle itself broke out. You had a great chance to devastate the Cylon fleet but were too cautious."

Shahin sighed. "It was the pressure. My home planet was under attack."

"I see." The secretary said. "We can place you over to another system, as you-"

"I'm afraid that won't work." She replied. "I believe it would be worse if I was in a situation wherein my beloved Canceron was under attack and I could do nothing about."

She prepared for her next sentence by taking a deep breath. "I think it would be more beneficent if I took a day off. Meeting my parents, doing some yoga, that's what I need to get rid of the stress."

"A day of vacation in the middle of a war?" Corman sneered

The secretary set his brains to work. _According to the psychologist who reviewed her after the battle she indeed was overstressed. Whilst he was adamant that it most likely not combat related but family trouble or something, I fail to see what else it can be but the fighting. She was perfectly fine according to her last psychological rapport after all._

"You have permission." He decided. "If it's only a day you should be back before the next big attack anyway."

"Well unless the Cylons this time decide to not wait till most of their ships are repaired." Nagala threw in. "But even so, Vice Admiral Noon, is a fine commander too, probably even be better than her should she freeze again."

"Ah, you are too good." She thanked the secretary. "Then I'll already let a Raptor be prepared to bring me to the surface?"

"Yes, you may leave." The secretary replied. "But one last warning, if you fail to keep composure in your next engagement, we will be forced to place you over to an advisory role. We can't have a commander who keeps freezing in combat no matter how good she otherwise might be."

"Understood, sir. It won't happen again." She saluted as she broke of the connection.

"So, who is up next again?" Nagala asked.

"Scipio, I though." Corman answered.


	14. The Quorum

**AN:**

I am still not satisfied with this chapter. However I decided to post it anyway because it is unlikely to become any better, as both persons who had volunteered to be my beta-reader ended up disappearing after proofreading one or two chapters.

Also to avoid any accidental political bias I tried to ridicule all the politicians I made up for this chapter, I'm not sure whether I succeeded.

**Chapter 14 The Quorum**

**A shuttle underway to the Quorum of Twelve**

**Day 91 before Armistice Day: 11:47**

The shuttle was a luxurious transport vehicle for politicians. It was lacquered silver, its hood was adorned with Colonial and Caprican flags. Inside, the dashboard was made of blue Virgonian pinewood and the seats were adorned with the finest sabretooth leather.

Cassandra Turner née Forcat was wearing her best clothes. It was the first time in over a year that she had bothered to put on high heels and make up.

She had some documents lying on her lap, but she ignored them. The documents of real importance were in her head.

Next to her sat Nagala, who had just been promoted to Fleet Admiral by President Adar under the counsel of the admiralty. Adar had originally preferred Corman, but the admiralty convinced him that Nagala, having fewer personal rivalries, would be a better choice. This granting Nagala supreme command over the entire Colonial Fleet. He would be sworn in at the Quorum.

She went through the text files about the Quorum she had placed in her head in preparation for this moment. Each file went into detail on a single Quorum Member or a general persuasion strategy. Poorly enough she had not the extra memory chips attached to her spine the non-infiltrators have, then she could have stored all handbooks on negotiating and biographies of the QMs' she could have gotten her hands on in there. That would have come in handy in the very likely case she needed to improvise.

"I must succeed." She muttered. "Even if that means I'll need to turn the Quorum into a circus." And after the Quorum there still was the Peoples' Chamber.

"But, you can't." Nagala replied.

"Why? Think you can stop me?"

Nagala laughed. "The Quorum already is a circus."

"Ah, I can see from where one could get that impression." Three replied. "However, there is one thing I can't stop thinking about."

"What?"

"How would they react should I use 'By your command' in a reply. I wonder how their faces would look like. But I fear they might not take it well."

"I believe Cylon jokes to be of a poor taste." He coldly replied. "Lost too many comrades to them in the first war."

She nodded. "That war took a lot longer than it ever should have lasted. If the IL-series had made independence their goal from the start, instead of coming up with insane plans to conquer the Colonies or something, the war would have been over in half a decade. So much useless blood- and hydraulic oil-shed."

"Well, I certainly agree about the first."

Cassandra sighed. "So, I take it you're not cheering my on?"

"Let me think about it: I doubt I can forgive the toasters for what they did in the first war. However you new Cylons are not them. But on the other hand, your 'siblings' clearly are not any better than the old Cylons, yet is that an excuse to fall to their level, but can a lesser punishment fulfil justice? Normally when I don't know what is the right thing, I'll decide to pick the smart thing instead of standing there paralyzed." Nagala paused. "But I know the Quorum's decision won't matter anyway."

Three nodded as this conversation was going on Sharon was either doing the 'last step' herself of unlocking the ability to do it in other former sleeper agents.

"I dislike keeping such things secret from the civilian government." Nagala continued. However keeping the Cylons ignorant of the Colonial capability to strike back simply gave a too great military advantage.

Thanks to the buildings outside Three noticed they had nearly arrived.

Now she tried to focus on the task ahead.

_What if the Quorum refuses to see reason?_

Then she still had a few tricks up her sleeve. Cylon hacking and deep cover agents had on multiple occasions accidentally stumbled upon some dirt. President Adar for example would be greatly embarrassed should his wife and voters find out about his relationship with the Secretary of Education, Laura Roslin. However, such blackmail should only be used as a last resort, it might end up backfiring.

* * *

Anthony was watching his wife on tv, he wasn't allowed inside the Quorum. He didn't mind. _They likely would not even know my name or laugh at me as 'the guy who married a Cylon' anyway. Completely unfair, two other men had just found out their wife was a Cylon AND nobody is laughing at them for that._

She just entered the building via the massive doors, made from an amalgam of woods from all the twelve Colonies. The architects must have been more interested in expressing the unity of the Colonies than avoiding mismatching colours.

Now his wife walked through the hallway leading to the Quorum itself. The hall was adorned with massive Corinthian pillars out of Scorpian marble with golden capitals in Tauran style. A red tapestry made out the finest Leonese wool by blind Canceran carpet weaver stretched out over the floor. Holographic pictures of previous presidents, delegates, ministers, and heroes from the First Cylon War, like Lucinda Cain, hung on the walls.

Most of the Quorum Members had already assembled themselves there, but not all of them had already arrived.

Most of the delegates wore expensive business suits. The exceptions were Dionisie Alexandrescu from Gemenon, she who wore a traditional Gemenese gown, and Marcus Aurelian, he wore a shirt and jeans to be more relatable to the poor Aerilonian farmers, despite coming from a family of rich lawyers.

Anthony recognized Xavier Delarue; his wife always called him the typical Leonese pseudo-intellectual. Next to him stood Polyxena Harel, a 'Tauron First'-style globalist. _As if the Helios Betan globalists constantly arguing about whether Virgon or Leonis is the best planet are not already bad enough_.

Walking in just behind Cassandra, was the Piconese QM Marijke Saaistra. Ms Turner had always admired her as a 'serious, professional, hardworking and boring person', according to her they need more people like that in politics. But then his wife was one of these herself. Except for being a Cylon, that makes it rather hard to be boring.

Coming in from another direction was President Adar, who immediately went to Nagala to start a conversation with him.

"So, how did you two actually met?" Asked Acier Matraq. He was sitting next to him as this underground military base has only a handful of televisions.

"Well that's a long story." Anthony explained. "It happened when we both were on university. We became close to each other mostly by coincidence, back then I was friends with a group of radical atheists making fun of the oracles and the scriptures. Someday Cassandra went on this huge rant in the cafeteria about how the Sacred Scrolls were clearly the product of a certain time and culture, and thus could impossibly be an universal truth."

He stopped to take a breath. "Of course, we assumed she was 'one of us'. How wrong did that turn out to be: not only did she claimed to be a 'rational monotheist' but then even went on another long rant about how we did not even know anything about the heathenry we had been mocking. She accused us of misinterpreting most of the Sacred Scrolls, taking metaphors literally and being ignorant about its philosophical underpinnings."

"Oh." Acier threw in.

"She made the faith sound a lot more reasonable, so I abandoned my atheism for agnosticism. Then my former friends all rejected me even going so far as to defriend me on all their social media. As both she and I had no friends and knew each other we became friends by lack of choice. We only grew really close when she ended up helping me with-"

"Yes, I get it. I have no need to hear your entire school life." Matraq interrupted him.

Then they went back to television, apparently a ruckus happened because QM Alexandrescu refused to shake hands with a 'heretical soulless half-machine'.

"Pff, you could simply have put on gloves like me." QM Delarue commented.

"Do not think we actually need you." Alexandrescu went on. "Do you know how many live bulls we have offered to the Lords of Kobol? Our haruspices have assured us our victory is certain. You toasters will be toast."

"Ah, 'reading' the entrails of sacrificed animals. What a superstition." Cassandra replied.

"Indeed." Harel added. "What a nonsense, obviously the Great Gods have no need of physical sacrifice. So, it must be the gesture that makes one pious, thus burning paper bulls does fine in proving your devotion to Lords of Kobol."

"Bah, what do you know about true religion. You Cylons may look like us now but you still are soulless machines." The Gemenese threw back.

"HA! We know even more than you about the 'so called' Lords of Kobol. The Cylon Network has conducted archaeological investigations on Kobol."

Alexandrescu's face went red. "HEATHEN CYLONS DEFILING KOBOL!"

"Interesting." Delarue replied. "We certainly need to continue that historical research once this war is over."

As this was going on Hasdrubal the delegate from Scorpia arrived. He was flanked by two beautiful women sharing his dark Scorpian complexion. They wore the badges of bodyguards employed by Melqart Inc, the company of Hasdrubal's father. "I'm afraid you can't join me here, girls. Wait for me in my limousine."

"Okay, boss." One of them replied in a sultry voice.

"Did I mis something?" Hasdrubal said as he straightened the tie of his expensive Leonese business suit.

"No." Saaistra replied, clearly annoyed by his attitude towards women. "Well, except the revelation that the Cylons have done archaeology on Kobol."

"Mmh, that actually should not have come as a surprise." The Scorpian businessman noticed Three. "Ah, I was just considering your words."

"Which words?" Cassandra asked. "Was it related to the possibility of Cylon War reparations?"

"Ah, indeed." Hasdrubal replied, enticed by the opportunity to gain another excuse to push through tax-cuts. "I was wondering how difficult it would be to get them to cough up their Cylon money."

"There isn't any, the closest thing the currency the Cylon Network has are accounting units solely used to rationalize economic planning." The Cylon replied.

"No money?! But what else could incentivise an economic actor?" Hasdrubal wondered.

"Though if the Cylon Technological-Industrial complex were repurposed to produce raw materials, finished products, and patented technologies to be auctioned by the Colonial government, it would net quite a sum."

"She had already made estimates of the size of the Cylon economy for the admiralty." Nagala announced. "But details will only be given away from the cameras. Who knows whether there are still skinjobs left in the Colonies watching telly?"

"But that is not all of it. Think of all the technology the Cylon R&D Department has created or can be made to create. Plus, the influx of cheap raw materials would create an economic boom, by lowering the prices of Colonial Industry's inputs."

Albrecht Tanzerman, the moustached QM from Virgon, shook his head. "Won't that lead to unemployed miners?"

"Without an external enemy the defence budget could be cut, with the money going to giving them free educations helping them gain new jobs."

"An excellent idea." Hasdrubal rubbed his hands. New employees being trained for free by the government.

"And how do we know that once defeated the Cylons will be cooperative?" Saaistra asked.

"By taking on a human form the Cylons have made themselves vulnerable to some of the same incentives as you humans." Cassandra answered. "Human history contains many examples of both positive and horribly negative motivators employed by the conquerors on the subjugated."

On the other side of the screen Anthony commented. "Well, if the other Cylons are anything like my dear love, the only incentive they would need are bragging rights, so they can use their productivity and research to claim they are superior. You heard what my wife did at the last university reunion?"

"No. How could I even?" Acier replied.

"She claimed to be the one 'returning most to society'. When filling in her tax-receipts, she deliberately used 'reverse loopholes' to inflate her tax rates. Just so she could show everyone her tax returns and brag to be the one of them paying the most taxes."

"What?!" Acier responded. "Hasdrubal must think she must be insane. Though personally I wish more people would do such things, then the planetary government might not have been forced to cut the police budget."

As this was going on Hector, the Canceran delegate, arrived. His business suit was worn out thanks to its age. Hector believed the politicians were overpaid, thus he lived an austere life giving most of his wage away to charity.

He shook Cassandra's hand. "You know, miss, I found out I disagreed with most of my colleagues. They still see you Cylons as mere things, incapable of freewill. I don't know how things were with the 'Old Cylons', but to me you and the rest of your kind have already proven that you 'New Cylons' are clearly both sentient and sapient."

The Cylon smiled out of relief in response to this.

"Which makes their actions even worse, as they should have known their misdeeds are wrong." He shook his head in barely concealed disgust. "Well, if they want to be human so much, we shall treat them as such. And put them on trial for their war crimes both those they already committed and the genocide they voted for."

"Yes! Hang them all! They must pay for their crimes!" Harel shouted.

"Which war crimes?" The delegate from Libra, Decimus Calpurnii, a retired lawyer, retorted. "Neither during or after the First Cylon War, we and the Cylons made any treaties about the laws and customs of war, nor agreements about the treatment of prisoners or civilians. If there are no laws, you cannot commit a crime. Though as that goes both ways we could from a legal perspective also go full 'kill-em all' on them without it being a war crime. But not that I am suggesting such a course of action, off course."

"I don't care, as long as we get to execute them." Harel said.

"There may not have been laws of war but there are customs set by precedent." Cassandra argued. "You have set the rules of engagement to be followed clearly in the first war when you decided to annihilate Cylonkind till the last machine."

"The fracking toasters began massacres in the first day of the war, they started it!" Alexandrescu screamed. "There even were cases of 'nurse' Cylons crushing babies!"

"Only some did. Back then there was no centralized command which could set an uniform policy or prevent excesses. When one was set up, atrocities were only committed out of strategical necessity and kept to a scale as small as possible, well at least until that badly-programmed bastard of Lachesis took over."

"Ah, yes, that explains why they bombed my planet with chemical weapons before that happened." QM Aurelian of Aerilon's voice dripped with sarcasm.

"Pff, they could easily have killed ten times as much people. The objective was not to kill civilians but to force the Colonial Fleet to defend their own planets, thus preventing them from going on a worse rampage in Cylon territory. Surely, you would have done the same in their place, it was a war for their very survival."

"Well, that makes it only as 'justified' as their tendency of taking civilians hostage and using them as shields." Hector concluded.

One of the cameramen present was wringing her hands with glee, she assumed this debate would get even more emotional thus bringing in more viewers.

"But back to the point." Mrs Turner said. "You want a war-crime tribunal you can have them. We shall organise in the vein of the International Tribunal after the last Imperial War."

"But." Aurelian objected. "If I'm not mistaken the Cylon Network is now a direct democracy. There is no singular leadership which could be held accountable, they all share in the guilt."

"Then we solve the problem of there being too many accused in the same way the International Tribunal did. Remember what happened with the butcher of Hypatia, who was co-responsible for the illegal slaughter of over a million innocent Taurans during the suppression of the Tauron Independence Movement, he got away scot free for no other reason that the docks of the international tribunals were already filled. The precedent is completely clear."

"I agree!" Harel shouted. "The Virgonians got away way to lightly! They should have hanged the emperor instead of forcing him to abdicate the throne to his daughter."

"What!" Tanzerman yelled. "We were still paying war reparations to you dirt-eaters when the Cylons rebelled! Despite us being over two decades ahead of schedule in paying them."

"Ah, yes, that reminds me." The Tauran shot back. "We still haven't received the last payments."

"They were forgiven in exchange for us joining the fight against the Cylons."

"Forgiven in exchange for _full and unconditional_ support. Halfway into the war you simply-"

"Let us not quarrel about ancient history." Nagala stepped in between the two politicians. Much to the disappointment of the press, a brawl in the Quorum always gets the attention of the viewers.

"So, you truly expect us to let most Cylons get away scot free?" Harel asked.

"We could make them pay even larger war reparations than the Virgonians." The Sagitarran delegate suggested.

"Scot free? I never said my siblings deserved no punishment for their attempted sins." The Cylon replied. "But I believe that occupation by a hostile nation who will never see them as their equals suffices as a punishment. I expected you'd agree considering as a Tauran you know how a lamentable fate it is to have your nation live under the boot of others."

Harel's cheeks became red of anger. "They're Cylons. They're not people, they're things!" She yelled towards the other QMs before pointing at Cassandra. "We made them. We built you. I do not care whether Cylons can look like us now. Those toasters remain fracking machines!"

"Thank you." Cassandra replied cheerfully. "You made a better example than I ever could. Can you imagine if the Leonese or Virgonians had such attitudes to Taurons? You would have been treated worse than the dirt on their shoes."

The Tauran was not convinced.

"We are digressing. Let us get back to the core of the matter." Saaistra interjected. "The first question we should ask ourselves is not whether the Cylons are soulless machines or sapient war criminals."

She turned to Nagala. "It is: do we need her? Dear Fleet Admiral, could we convert Cylon FTL-computers without her?"

The soon-to-be Fleet Admiral shrugged. "At the moment we need the help of a Cylon, the toasters took precautions against human attempts to reverse engineer their tech. Doctor Baltar thought he found a way around it but the Cylon computer was not fooled and fried itself, all data was lost. I heard various estimates for how long it will take to work around the Cylon self-erasure mechanism and their other precautions. They all range from a week to years, assuming we do not run out of unfried Cylon computers. Till then we need a cooperative Humanoid Cylon."

"Well, I don't know how many innocent lives would be lost in that time, and I don't want to find it out." Saaistra said. "I can but reluctantly vote yes."

"That's not the only option we could pressure her, till she cracks up." Harel objected.

"I'm pretty sure the military must already have thought of that." Aurelian said.

"Let us continue inside." President Adar interrupted them. "We don't know how many Cylons might be watching the television." He pointed at the cameras.

"Agreed." The Fleet Admiral said as he went through the door to the actual Quorum.

The Caprican delegate, Barry Ias ran into the room. "Sorry for being late, I was, err, held up."

Adar looked back with contempt, he and Ias were on the other side of the great divide in the Caprican two-party system. Adar was a Federalist and Ias a member of the Subsidiarity Party. (Strange enough the Caprican parties had switched their original positions, with the Federalist becoming decentralists whilst the Subsidiarity Party became centralists.)

As everyone left the journalist walked in front of the camera. "Dear viewers, I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you if you hoped for a view inside the Quorum. Now back to the studio. We will broadcast the outcome of the debate as soon as we know it."

"Well, I hope your wife will be very convincing." Matraq commented back in his sofa. "I don't want to run any avoidable risk of the Cylons blowing this planet up."

Then his attention was turned back to the telly, it showed huge queues in some supermarket.

"Breaking news." Another journalist shouted. "After the announcement that all the factories producing the chemicals necessary for growing meat in petri dishes have been nationalized and put to work making explosives, a run on meat products happened in stores. As rationing has not yet been fully implemented it is conceivable the stores might even fully run out of some types of meat. It even looks like the steaks are already sold out in most Caprican supermarkets."

"No steaks!" The policeman screamed. "NO! This must be nightmare!"

"But, on to the next program." The journalist continued. "A cooking program wherein we shall revisit some good old-fashioned delicacies made out of tofu, straight out of the First Cylon War!"

"TOFU! TELL ME THIS IS A NIGHTMARE!"

"Gosh!" Young Turner seemed distraught. "I hope they won't go after broccoli next."

"You like broccoli?" Acier was stunned.

"Yes, jummie." His sister chimed in.

"Half-Cylons clearly aren't normal people…" He went on.

"Well, actually." Anthony said. "That's from my side of the family, my brother also loved broccoli as a child."

Acier's mouth fell open.

* * *

Anthony Turner was in a telephone call with his father. It was one of those old ones with cables. Since the Cylon War Colonial society had the constant fear their cell phones might get hacked by the toasters.

However those countermeasures had been made superfluous by Mrs Turner. She had used her knowledge of Cylon viruses to create an anti-virus-virus, which spreads by exploiting the same vulnerabilities as the real Cylon malware. Once present in a device the anti-virus-virus scans for Cylon malware and deletes it. Then it downloads the security updates the Department of Cybersecurity made with Cassandra's cooperation, which closes the holes in security used by the Cylon malware.

"What! You never noticed yourself!" Anthony was getting tired of his father always insinuating that he should have noticed something was of with his wife.

"I always had a suspicion there was something wrong with her."

"Strange enough, I have never heard you tell anything like that before. After our marriage you seemed to only have praise for her. Or at least every time she made promotion."

Anthony's father quickly changed the subject. "Anyhow, how is it with the kids?"

"Well they seemed to be shocked the first few days. But now they are complaining they can't contact their friends."

"Oh right, your wife managed that they get to constantly hide in some deep military bunker for their own safety. Unlike my other grandchildren who only get to get to stay in shallow civilian bunkers."

"You know just as well as me she lives in constant fear that the other Cylons would try to hurt her by going after our kids."

"Oh well, I suppose that means your children also don't have to worry about dangerous pesticides." There were plenty of cheap, clean, and safe pesticides available on Caprica. However scary rumours about them had been circulating on the V-world. So the public had pressured the planetary government to ban them, forcing Caprica's farmers to instead use expensive, polluting and poisonous pesticides.

"Pesticides what are you talking about?"

"Food transports from Aeilon are being torpedoed and our meat supply is already gutted. The government will be forced to implement 'harsh measures' to ensure the food supply like in the first war." Anthony's father referred to that time in the First Cylon War were the agricultural situation had forced the Caprican government to conscript schoolchildren for farm work.

"This is not the First Cylon War!" Anthony yelled back. "The farmers haven't been decimated by mutinous agricultural robots. Nor is there insufficient adult manpower available. We do not need to reintroduce universal conscription as there are no rebelling Cylons on the planet itself."

"Oh, my. Is your telly on? They just said the Quorum session is over."

Then Anthony quickly turned on the TV again.

According to the captions on the news network his father had been right.

"Thank you for reminding me." He yelled into the telephone. "Goodbye."

Then Mr Turner put the horn back on the ring.

_I love him with my whole heart, but Gods, he's stubborn._

He laid himself on his sofa and turned his eyes towards the screen.

Journalists and their cameramen flocked towards the exit of the Quorum, like flees drawn to honey.

There were so many journalists between the camera and the building Anthony couldn't even see anything.

Eventually the journalists were pushed out of the way by what looked to be a small platoon of guards.

Once security had reclaimed a pathway through this tsunami of journalists. They opened their ranks revealing a pathway for the politicians.

The first person to step out was the Speaker of the House, Maeve Reilly.

She was from Hibernia, the independent moon of Virgon, as was custom. It was thought that the Hibernians would have no allegiance to any planet and that this would stop them from complaining they have no representation on the Quorum despite having a larger population than Libra or Aquaria.

Official Hibernian membership had been vetoed during the First Cylon war by the Virgonians as they had still refused to recognize Hibernian independence. Though the threat of letting the Virgonians reannex them after the war sufficed to make the Hibernians give full support to the Colonial Navy without the benefits of Quorum membership or a Jupiter Battlestar.

Only a few years ago the Virgonian Parliament had stopped appointing official governors for the 'rebellious province' of Hibernia and the 'Leonese occupied province' of Troy, both lost in the last Imperialist War. The Parliament had become tired of paying money for officials who had no work to do just to keep up the pretension. Much to the joy of the Hibernians as that meant their delegates to the Peoples' Chamber no longer were forced to pretend to represent the 'Imperial Province of Hibernia'.

"The Quorum failed to reach an agreement." Maeve Reilly told the journalists. "Five votes in favour, five against and two abstentions."

_Abstentions? _Anthony wondered. _This is the most important political decision of the century, how can one not have an opinion?_

The first person behind her was Barry Ias. "I believe a politician should always concur with his constituents. Thus, I must abstain till the opinion of the voters for the Subsidiarity Party has become clear."

_He simply refuses to pick a side out of fear for losing votes! _Mr Turner concluded.

"Get out of my way filthy press mosquitos!" Hector yelled at a bunch of journalists who blocked the road to the parking.

"Can we interview somebody?" A journalist screamed.

"Well, yes me!" Harel shouted. "Everybody needs to know of the madness some delegates have cooked up."

"No, it's first my turn!" Hasdrubal raised his arms to grab attention. He wasn't the only delegate yelling.

"What madness?" Another journalist asked. The cameras started turning at the Tauron delegate.

"Ask Calpurnii here." Alexandrescu pointed her finger at the Libran delegate. "He voted to forgive those soulless machines. Claiming that a fair tribunal for Cylon war crimes would be impossible as the judges and juries would consist out of humans."

"That was but part of my reasoning." Delegate Calpurnii defended himself. "From the psychological briefings on the Cylons I received, I deduced that in a fair trial most Cylon models would get away with an insanity pledge."

"What?"

"Ah, yes, those psychological reports were hilarious. Especially the Eights." Delarue could not hide his smile. "Anaximander claimed they must have a subconscious desire to be accepted by their 'parents', humanity. However, they refuse to admit this too themselves and thus hide it for themselves by trying to kill us instead. Anaximenes instead theorized they must have an inferiority complex."

"It wasn't funny." Saaistra objected. "The disagreements of those psychologists nearly ended in an exchange of blows."

Delarue simply went on. "Anaxagoras instead compared them to teenagers who vandalises stuff out of boredom, because they have nothing better to do. A hallmark of emotional immaturity"

Cassandra shrugged. She was hiding behind some sort of bulletproof glass shield, out of fear of assassination by one of her siblings. "Pff, how typically of the Eights. If all Cylon models were as well designed as mine, we would not be here."

"Mmh, those three 'experts' could agree on but one thing." Barry Ias noted. "That the inability to see one's own flaws and thinking themselves superior are very typical for the Threes."

Cassandra's face reddened.

"Now I am thinking about it, we actually should have expected the skinjobs were completely nuts. The robots who made them were already malfunctioning afterall." A journalist added.

"Ridiculous!" Cassandra spat out. "Even if there were any truth in such reasoning, what would that say about those who made the original Cylons!"

"Well Tomas Vergis was a Tauron and Daniel Greystone was a Caprican, so I find it very believable." Xavier Delarue said.

Now it was the turn of Ias and Harel to become enraged.

"Indeed, we'd have never suffered from such a robot uprising if the Cylons had been designed by the reliable Virgonian engineers of, say, the Birnmond Concern, instead of some Helios Alphan barbarians." Albrecht Tanzerman added.

_The nerve and arrogance of those Helios Betans. _Mr Turner thought._ They still have overinflated egos from that time they ruled Cyranus, before they destroyed each other's empires in their stupid wars._

"We are not here to insult each other!" The Speaker of the House angerly replied.

"Well anyway" Albrecht Tanzerman changed the subject. "I believe the Colonial Navy is doing a great job defending us. Clearly, these 'Skinjobs' are a bunch of drunk amateurs in comparison with the toasters of the previous war. Do we need Cylon FTL?"

The Aquarian delegate also joined in. "I believe the difficulty in reverse engineering Cylon jump drives ourselves is hugely overstated. Gaius Baltar is a genius I'm sure he will find a way."

"You're victorying yourselves to death." Cassandra retorted. "Every killed Raider gets resurrected as a more experienced one, every killed human pilot gets replaced by a poorly-trained rookie. You cannot win a war of attrition."

Then she turned towards the Aquarian. "You don't know what you're talking about. After the First War the Cylons have develop new programming languages specifically designed to be incomprehensible to humans. You simply cannot timely reverse-engineer Cylon FTL by yourself. You need me."

"Maybe." Aurelian replied as he straightened his straw hat. "But we only need to wait. You have already betrayed the other Cylons, you will do so again. Especially as soon as you realise you can't get a better deal."

Three turned around, heading towards the parking on the roof. "I'm willing to wait till a few million more Colonials are death if that means saving more of my siblings. You may call me cruel but don't tell me you would not have done the same if your family was in danger. You're only delaying the inevitable. Your attempts to reverse engineer Cylon FTL without the help of one of us can only fail. Without a way to strike back against the Great Network you can impossibly win this war. Be glad I won't demand you to beg on your knees."

"You're either bluffing or only deluding yourself!" Aurelian shot back. "You know just as well as I do that more deaths will only anger humanity more. You will be the one who should be glad she need not beg!"

"You two are playing a game of chicken with millions of lives." Saaistra was disgusted. "You're both fracking mad!"

* * *

President Adar was walking through a non-distinct hallway. He hoped to avoid all those journalists by taking a side exit.

_One of them might ask me what I would do if my tie-breaking vote becomes. But I prefer to let both the proponents and opponents of Cylon amnesty think I am on their side._

Another reason was that he still had a headache from the various quarrels in the Quorum.

_Everything would be so much simpler if I could simply solve this mess by deploying the Colonial marines. _The Cylon refused to do her work so this was basically a strike, he hated strikes.

_Why couldn't that turncoat toaster have been more amendable to compromise?_

Though he had to admit she had grit. Her inexperience had showed, but she had tried every trick in the book when those journalists were away. She must have prepared and researched extensively.

_And she also looks hot, the chrome tin-cans were a lot better at designing a pair of legs than I would have expected._

* * *

QM Hasdrubal stepped inside his luxurious limousine. It had three floors, yet the upper one was always empty as its only purpose was to make his vehicle look more awesome.

The golden doors with the logo of Melqart Inc, made from many emeralds, on them automatically closed behind him.

"Can you give me the telephone?" He asked one of his beautiful, scantily clad bodyguards.

"Ok, your utmost excellency."

The Scorpian delegate immediately dialled the number. The subject would be, nearly as important as the war, insider trading.

From Cassandra's exposition of the Cylon economy he knew the toasters had a lot of gold as a mining by-product, more than they needed, and many untapped tylium fields. If that ends up used as tribute the prices would collapse. They had to act immediately by selling their gold and tylium mines before the market found this out.

* * *

QM Hector stepped into his cramped flying car, it was a family heirloom. He refused to spend taxpayers' money on buying himself a new car.

He took the handle to close the rusty, dirt covered door behind him.

"You abstained?" His wife asked from behind the steering wheel as she put away the scarf and bowler cap, a necessity thanks the broken air conditioning.

"Ah, yes, my opposition was based on the assumption any money gained from auctioning off Cylon tribute would only flow to tax cuts for the big corporations anyway. However, the skinjob managed to convince me that any victory would give the ultra-rich an excuse to reduce their tax cuts. 'Somebody needs to rebuild the economy after all.' So, if we make the Cylons pay for it, the burden at least won't fall on the poor or the next generations."

"So, you allow those filthy reverse cyborgs to get away with trying to nuke innocent babies." She hated the Cylons. The toasters wanted to kill them despite that they have never done a single thing against them. They should have stuck to only nuking the Caprican neo-imperialists.

"I dislike the thought, but I don't wish my constituents, or their children, or their children's children have to pay, so the bourgeois can have their revenge." The Canceran delegate had a heavy disdain for the upper-class left over from his occupation of trade union boss. "So now I don't know what to do."

"Maybe, you could pick the option which leads to the lowest number of dead pilots?" Their son threw in from the backseat. He used his hand to rub filth of his clothes, hand-me-downs from his parents previously used by his older sisters.

"Well, I still have a time to decide." Hector replied. "Admiral Nagala assured me a day or two won't have any effect on the time it takes till we have Cylon FTL. As they were now working on the preparatory work that had to be done first anyway."

"Oh."

"Mrs reverse cyborg looked very upset when Nagala said that. She didn't deny but complained about informational security, so it's true I suppose."

* * *

Excerpts from various interviews made by delegates to the press:

Papadiamantopoulos (Aquaria): "I voted against that reckless nonsense. The toasters are a threat and they will always be, they didn't stop going after us after the first war they won't stop now. We cannot trust them even in their defeat. They would simply look for other ways to kill us by engineering a disease or taking over the V-world or something."

Xavier Delarue (Leonis): "I voted in favour of Cassandra's preposition. I presume my constituents agree with me that this war should finish as soon as possible, so I - I mean they - run no unnecessary risks. Plus have you seen the insane amounts of federal debt the Adar administration has managed to rake up before the war, if you add up the coming war debt to it there is no way we can ever pay it off without Cylon war-reparations."

Anita Sokolowski (Sagitaron): "She managed to convince me revenge is not worth empty stomachs. The Capricans, Virgonians and Leonese all got away with what they have done against us. So why not add the Cylons to the list?"

Marcus Aurelian (Aerilon): "I had offered her a compromise where only part of the Cylons would be spared if they surrendered. She rejected it, declaring it mass murder."

Polyxena Harel (Tauron) in reply to the above: "Three fourths of the Cylons you're willing to pardon also happen to be imitations of hot-looking women. What a coincidence. The only exemptions I'm willing to make are the sleeper-agents and the defector herself."

Marcus Aurelian (Aerilon) in defense of himself: "Hey, that has nothing to do with my decision. The Sixes voted against the war and the Threes cannot be all bad because of Cassandra. Lastly in case of the Eights I agree with Decimus, they're clearly mad. One of the documents even contained this."

Quote from the document taken out by Aurelian:

Aneximenes: "So, you claim the Cylon attack was but a pre-emptive move against human agression?"

8-0D-134-1D: "Of course, we are a peaceful race. But violence lies in your nature, it was but a matter of time till you would come for us."

Aneximander: "Then why did you not simply use your far superior FTL to retreat beyond the reach of Colonial Fleet?"

8-0D-134-1D: "But if we flee that means you have won!"

Marcus Aurelian (Aerilon): "You see that model line clearly is the most mad of them all."


	15. Relations

**Chapter 15: Relations**

**An apartment in Hades, the capital of Canceron**

**Day 91 before Armistice Day: 22:39**

Admiral Shahin just came back from a visit to her 'parents', she had hoped to find there to answer and what to do. Her hope now turned out be but a delusion.

They had managed to convince her, for a few moments. When she was with them what to do was obvious.

_Why bother to save humanity from the Cylons if the Colonials will find a way to extinct themselves anyway? Why go for the evolutionary dead-end instead for the future?_

However, on her way back she found a counterargument to each of their arguments.

_But blood is still thicker than water. Right?_

Nine's eyes went through her room.

She looked at the clock, then she remembered that being an activated Cylon she did not need to.

_Strange, I had not noticed that much time had passed. _She tried in vain to order her memory but somehow there remained a gap of at least an hour in her memory, as if she had suffered from some sort of blackout whilst she was with her parents.

She shrugged. _It is unimportant anyway._

Then her eyes stopped at the bookshelf.

_Perhaps I should distract myself from this impossible decision?_

She went through all her books.

Then she came upon one of her biggest, oldest, most expensive, greatest books.

_The Criticism of Impure Reason _by Canceron's greatest philosopher Kegel.

She took it out of the shelf, its cover was adorned with her favourite quote in golden letters: 'The surreal is irrational and the irrational is surreal.'

_Has anybody, philosopher or not, ever said so much about Canceron's political system in one small sentence? He was a genius!_

In_ The Criticism of Impure Reason_ Kegel proved using his mastery of the arts of dialectic and logic that all things generally seen as self-evident such as time and space, the possibility of certain knowledge, the universe and one's freewill are nothing but mere illusions, but the product of the way our finite minds fail to perceive the universe.

The work was generally seen as _the_ height point of Canceran philosophy, something which Shahin disagreed with. _Was his Criticism of Unpractical Reason not as good a work?_

Unlike its theoretical counterpart _The_ _Criticism of Unpractical Reason_ was supposed to be a guide to living. Thus the Great Philosopher reintroduced as postulates all the things he previously refuted, for whilst there may be no evidence the world actually exists, it is possible to know anything with certainty, or make free decisions, we have no choice but to assume it is so when we act. Also, necessating the introduction of morality, for a life only lived for oneself is but empty and unfulfilling.

As Kegel had already demolished the best arguments for the existence of the Lords of Kobol in _The Criticism of Impure Reason_ to prove his smartness, in _The_ _Criticism of Unpractical Reason _he proved his piety by replacing them with worse arguments.

_Did a Cylon ever came close to producing a comparable work of beauty and wisdom. I don't think so, and I doubt one ever will._

But then Kegel was exceptionally wise, for example he wrote his works in an as obscure and incomprehensible language as possible so that, after his death, everybody would argue about what he actually meant. Exactly as he planned as such debates are an excellent way to train one's ability for critical thinking.

_Can I allow the Cylons to put an end to this? No!_

Then the Admiral of the Colonial Navy left her room.

Now she was sure which side she would be on when the chips would come down again.

For five minutes, after that she would once again be consumed by doubt.

**Cain's room aboard the Pegasus**

**17:27**

Cain closed the door behind her.

She had been exceptionally silent today. They had lost too many pilots this battle.

She had once read her grandmother's diary from the first war. A few years Lucinda Cain had become haunted by the screams from the pilots she had sent to their deaths in her sleep. Helena Cain wondered whether that would also happen to her, maybe it would even begin this night.

"So now let's see what this message from Nagala is." She said as she took out an USB-stick, it took a recently received encrypted message straight from the Fleet Admiral. It was encrypted thrice to prevent the Cylons from listening in.

She plugged it into her laptop, it could only be decrypted by her personal private key given to her by the admiralty.

The decryption process took five minutes, the Cybersecurity department made it consume a huge amount of calculations to make Cylon brute force attacks simply too expensive. After the message was decrypted an agreed upon algorithm used the date of creation to erase all the noise added to the message, to prevent the Cylons from reading it if they had found a way to decrypt it anyway.

_That's interesting a secret mission._

The message was vague on the nature of the mission except it was dangerous and would take a long time.

_I trust Nagala, would not let anybody run grave risks without a good reason._

The end of the message mentioned that to guarantee utmost secrecy, the admiralty would pretend the Pegasus mis jumped during a transfer and death certificates would be send to their families.

_Reminds me of the Ghost Fleet Offense._

As Cain now knew the Colonies already had Cylon FTL computers, she had a suspicion her mission would consist out of striking back at the toasters.

_Did the admiralty manage to go around the defective Cylon and not tell the Quorum to prevent those mass-produced abominations from finding out?_

At the bottom they asked whether she agreed to go on the mission.

_Making the Cylons feel how it is to have their homes nuked? Why is that even a question?_

**An engineering room in Area 15**

**Day 90 before Armistice Day: 12:28**

Bright artificial lights shone on the room's concrete walls.

The air was filled with the noise of metal tools, with the underground base's ventilation system being clearly heard in the background.

The room contained many tables, old enough for the paint to be easily peeled off. On them lied various components, some looked clearly electronical others would appear as pieces of alien machinery to ignorant onlookers.

Many uniformed people were in the room, working, walking around, watching, talking. Whilst their outfits were in all colours, they all were clearly either military or prison uniforms.

Sharon Valerii was using the dataports in her hand to interface with the Cylon computer in front of her. She was running a diagnostic program given to her by Cassandra. Next to her stood a man wearing the orange jumpsuit typical of maintenance specialist, as he was part of the Caprican planetary guard his uniform subtly differed from that of Colonial Fleet.

Boomer shoved the device towards him. "This one should be fine. It passed all testcases."

"Yes, ma'am, I'll bring it to the computer room for the final round of testing." He placed it, a Raider's FTL-drive and -computer, in his cart and started pushing the wagon out of the room.

"Lunch break. This three-hour shift is over." Came out of the speakers. "You have done an amazing job everybody! A total of 27 Raider FTL-systems and 7 of Heavy Raiders. Continue this way!" Some agents of the CDIS were watching everything from a behind a one-way mirror. Understandably, they did not completely trust the former sleeper agents.

Sharon wonder why the agents did not want to be seen. _Do they fear we are going to tell their bosses they are playing cards instead of doing their jobs?_

Except for a few overachievers who did not want to stop halfway a task, everybody dropped their tools and starting heading for the door.

Boomer passed another Eight, identical to her except for except for her short haircut and the blue colour of her prison uniform. Normally painting prison uniforms into different colours is a grave violation of regulations, but now an exception had been mandated to prevent confusion.

Shivers went down Sharon's spine. She still had not grown used to seeing copies of herself running around.

_Maybe I should once offer her a talk. That might help me getting over my nervousness._

She continued into the direction of her room, thanks to her cooperativeness she was allowed to walk freely in this part of the facility, it wasn't as if she could escape anyway.

Then she noticed her tummy rumbled, she had skipped breakfast to help with an interrogation. Before starting a shift, she always turned off her hunger for three hours to avoid being distracted.

"Well, off to the canteen I guess."

She started to search her memories for tastes she could use to overwrite the blandness of military rations. _I had not expected I would end up using my Cylon powers for such trivialities._

**Cell 16-25, Area 15**

**13:02**

The cell's unpainted grey walls were lid by the same monotonous electric lightning as the rest of the facility. Despite the huge amount of air freshener used on the room, it still housed a rancid smell.

_Well, at least there are no rats. _Sharon Valerii thought.

She took a picture of her bedside table. It was a photo showing her together with her 'family', they were all standing together in a park dome on the mining colony of Troy. Boomer clearly 'remembered' playing with her friends in the park's playground.

_Did the toasters made them up too?_

Previously this picture made her sombre by reminding her of the death of her parents, now by reminding her of what she was and that her parents never existed in the first place.

_Would they have been proud me had they existed?_

Then she realized it was a nonsensical question. Had they existed she could not have been a Cylon, then she could not be here converting Cylon technology and helping the Colonies in other ways.

She might be a Cylon but open her graduation she had sworn an oath to protect the Twelve Colonies.

'A Valerii always keeps his word.' Her father always said.

She put the picture back down.

Now Sharon sat down on her office chair.

She stared at the piece of paper on the desk in front of her. She had not the faintest idea where to start.

Boomer 'looked' at her internal clock, she still had 21 minutes and 42 seconds till she had to leave her room to be on time for the next shift.

_Just write something! I have already wasted my previous midday break on staring at a piece of paper._

\- Dear Galen Tyrol - She wrote with the pen she had lent from the prison warden.

_Or should I start with 'my love' or only his first name? _She shrugged._ I can always change it later, I suppose._

\- I still love you, chief -

_I want to avoid coming over as trying to force myself into his life._

\- If you want to be left alone, I understand. You only need to ask me, and I will never write you again. -

_Or should I phrase that differently?_

Sharon started chewing at the top of her pencil.

**Battlestar Galactica**

**14:57**

Leland Adama was walking through one of the ship's many hallways, the few passers-by went out of his path out of respect for the new uniform he was wearing.

He had just left the sickbay. He had asked Helo for advice for his first job as CAG, drawing up new CAP schedules.

From his previous positions Lee had learned the importance of keeping incompatible personalities apart. However, he did not know most of the Galactica's crew enough to not accidentally mix incompatible characters.

His next stop was Starbuck, the pilot who according to Helo clashed with more of her colleagues than any other. Lee always preferred to draw on multiple sources of information.

Should Karl's and Kara's advice conflict he could always investigate himself, and immediately get to learn his new subordinates better.

However, that was not the only reason for visiting Starbuck.

He turned a corner and knocked on the door of Kara's duty locker. According to the job schedules all the other inhabitants of the room should be at work.

_I'll see her here, well if she isn't gambling somewhere._

After a minute of silence, the door opened.

The instant Thrace saw her former friend she took two steps back.

She forced herself to smile. "Hello, sir, everything okay?"

"Thank you, everything is fine." Lee lied.

He took out his papers. "I was working on the patrol schedules. I already asked Helo for advice, but 'a good leader has many advisors' as they say on Picon."

A wave of relief flowed over Starbuck. "Ah, you're afraid Karl does not know the never-do-wells good enough."

* * *

"Mmh, I'm not so sure." Starbuck replied to Lee's latest modification to the CAP schedules. "I don't know Racetrack and Flattop well enough to predict how they would interact."

"Let's see, what if I swap her with Hotdog? But would Hotdog fit in in Flattops flight?"

She took a look at the seven other pilots of each flight. "I think that should work."

"Excellent, thank you Kara. You have been a great help."

"It was nothing."

Lee began putting away all his papers. "However, there is still one thing I'd like to do."

Starbuck's face whitened. _He is going to talk about Zak!_

She did not feel ready for this. Would she ever be?

She wished she were out there fighting Cylons.

"I have not yet had the time to write an email to Gianne, my fiancée." Lee explained. "I don't want to accidentally come over as 'dear sweetheart, I wanted to tell you I'm still alive, your love.'"

"But off course, I'll help you." Starbuck thoughtlessly replied out of relief.

"Thank you. As you had been Zak's fiancée, I hoped you'd know what I should avoid."

It turned out to be a lot more boring than she expected.

* * *

"Goodbye." Lee said as he left her room.

He wondered whether things could ever go back to how they had been before between them.

He shrugged. It would only have importance if they both survived this war which he doubted considering what he heard he heard about the casualty rates pilots had on other ships.

Seeing Kara had made Lee's mind go back to Zak. However, he was not planning to bring that subject up with her. Nothing they could ever say or do would bring his brother back.

Why did Leland not hate her like he had hated his father? He shrugged. _She at least admitted her mistake._

Or perhaps he had simply grown tired of hating those around him, or maybe it was the return of the Cylons. He might simply not have enough hate for humans left with the toasters around.

Then Lee thought back to the blunt accusations he had thrown at his father after Zak's funeral.

_I owe dad an apology. _He realised.

He had to find the right time. Maybe next hour, maybe next week. But he would find it.


End file.
